Final Words
After our Doom 3 - CPU Battlegrounds article, we already knew what to expect from CPU performance under Half Life 2. At this point, Intel's Pentium 4 architecture does take a backseat to AMD's Athlon 64 when it comes to gaming. With performance advantages of around 15% at the same price point, the Athlon 64 does offer a noticeable increase in performance over the Pentium 4 in Half Life 2. The extensive physics engine in Half Life 2, especially as seen in Half Life 2 Deathmatch, is very CPU dependent and thus we see a real world performance advantage to the Athlon 64 over Intel's Pentium 4.
Not only is the game very CPU intensive, but because of its dependency on a fast CPU, Half Life 2 also appears to be quite dependent on high available memory bandwidth and low latency memory at the same time. Half Life 2 is actually the first game where we've seen this degree of dependency, which does make for some interesting predictions for the CPU/platform requirements of the next generation of games. Despite what we have seen in recent years, it does look like the next generation of games that employ more sophisticated artificial intelligence and physics will be quite CPU and platform dependent, just as they are GPU limited. The balance will obviously vary from scene to scene in the games, just as we've seen with Half Life 2, but the limitations will be there.
In terms of the right speed CPU to pair up with your GPU, if you have a high-end GPU (X800 or 6800GT class) then the faster you go the better off you are. Mid-range GPU owners will find that anything the speed of an Athlon 64 3000+ (Socket-939) will offer the best bang for your buck, with diminishing returns after that. If you happen to have an older Radeon 9600/9700/9800 based card, then even an Athlon 64 2800+ will be overkill for your GPU. If you are stuck with one of those older but still well-performing GPUs, don't bother upgrading your CPU unless it's something slower than a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 - you'd be much better served by waiting and upgrading to dual core later on.
The impact of the CPU on gaming performance is in a transitional stage right now. As more games use Half Life 2 style physics we will see similar impacts with regards to CPU performance, but at this point there's a great deal of work being done on multithreading game engines for the next generation of games. So while the games coming in the immediate future may behave similarly to Doom 3 and Half Life 2, it's the games that follow that will truly be interesting.
Check back in the coming weeks for more information on multithreading, dual core and the future of CPU performance in game engines among other areas...
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Phantronius - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
If your gaming on a laptop, you need help.RockHydra11 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Was anyone surprised by the results, or didn't know what the answer would be already? I could make a very educated guess before I even clicked on the link.T8000 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
This kind of CPU reviewing really makes me wonder if anyone plays with a $700 R850 XT-PE without anti-aliasing, anistrophic filtering and does so at 1280x1024.I mean, if that's all you want, why not save a cool $500 and buy a GF6600GT instead.
It would be nice if someone reviewed CPU scaling at real gaming settings, because the 20% differences created here, may translate in only 5% with real settings, making it unnoticable during gameplay.
Whiskyboy - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
I thought the artilce was a nice return to the feature for feature comparison that a shopper like myself really finds useful. I'm slighlty curious about upcoming technologies but I'm really disintereted in seeing how the brand new toy from AMD or Nvidia performs because I'm not going to suggest paying the ridiculous premiums they charge for the new junk. Seeing the effect that things like memory timings, bandwidth, cpu clock have on performance in a consistent platform make it easier for me to make recommendations to my customers for their systems. I like the Buyer's Guide articles, but in all honesty I want the charts that this article has. If you are suggesting that there should be more articles like this, I agree, but I'm not about to complain about the first article in months that actually made a useful shopper's comparison. Thanks AnandMarlowe - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
I would like to see the cpu scaling done with Intel cpu's too! :)Cybercat - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
The X850XT PE being a PCIe part, how did you use it on Socket 754 CPUs? I've not seen any Socket 754 NF4 boards yet.Aquila76 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#32 - Gamers buy PC's in orders of magnitude greater numbers than laptops. Maybe you can run Half-life 2 on your Intel Extreme Graphics, but that's nothing compared to gaming on an A64 with a decent video card and sound.jherber - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
where is the pentium m? MOST OF US BUY LAPTOPS THESE DAYS.REMF - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
roflmao:http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/half%20life%202...
an Athlon64 3200+ @ 2.0GHz gets 112fps
an Athlon64 3000+ @ 1.8GHz gets 104fps
.'. an A64 3100+ @ 1.9GHz would get 108fps
...... the same as a P4 570 running at 3.8GHz, twice the speed!
LOL
bupkus - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
I'm glad to finally see this article. I've been waiting for weeks and beginning to think this article was just "vaporware". ;)As to the following quote:
"If you are stuck with one of those older but still well-performing GPUs, don't bother upgrading your CPU unless it's something slower than a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 - you'd be much better served by waiting and upgrading to dual core later on."
As this was just a tantalizing morsel of things to come, I'm looking forward to the coming weeks.