Gabriel said:
Hi all, I at the moment have an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (2.0 ghz I think) and
need to know if a Pentium 4 3.2ghz is going to be better for games for
example F.E.A.R says it needs a minimum of a P4 1.7 ghz and a reccomended P4
3.0 ghz.
As far as games go is the P4 3.2 ghz pritty good or is there another type of
cpu maker out there faster and better for games but not including the
Pentium D as I read the dual core isnt as great for games.
Thanks
GK
There are integer and floating point benchmarks here. The performance of the
cores is additive in these charts, so for a dual core, you'd divide by two
to get the performance of a single core. It looks like the integer performance
is similar at similar core clock rates, but for some reason the floating point
of each dual core processor is less. Notice that this benchmark does not seem
to be cache dependent, as different generations running at the same core speed,
seem to have similar performance numbers.
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=443&model2=446&chart=158
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=443&model2=446&chart=159
You'll notice that the Core 2 Duo processors are higher up the charts than
the others. Even though the Core 2 Duo has a lower internal clock, it does
have a higher IPC (instructions per clock). (And the Core 2 Duos aren't even
overclocked in the chart - you'll want to find some overclocking articles,
to see how far they can be pushed. You don't have to buy the highest clocked
processor, to get a high clocked platform.)
This review suggests the game is demanding of both the GPU and the CPU.
If you're going to waste money on an upgrade, it might as well be a decent
one. An overclocked Core 2 Duo might be one way to do it. The GPU end of
things might be more expensive to fix.
http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2005/10/24/fear/1.html
Paul
