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Often a computer is designed to meet a set budget of some description and therefore the range of hardware that can be purchased is limited. For those building to a limited budget, it is important to create a well balanced computer. This will allow the user to obtain the very best performance possible, as all the hardware components will be able to operate at their maximum capability.  Nevertheless, it is often very difficult to select the right hardware components that will complement each other. Quite often I find a gamer's choice in certain hardware components could be considered as 'overkill'. A simple example, pairing a GeForce 8800 GTX series graphics card with a Pentium 4 processor would surely be a candidate for overkill on the graphics cards behalf. That said, the GeForce 8800 GTX is an incredibly impressive graphics card and is now the fastest solution available. Featuring 768MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 1.8GHz with a 575MHz core frequency is just the beginning. Amazingly, the ability to operate two of these graphics cards simultaneously exists. This makes me wonder what kind of CPU could deliver a balance between processing and rendering power. Of course Intel and AMD do offer a range of extremely expensive processors designed to deliver ultimate performance. Intel appropriately named their high-end desktop processors series "Extreme", while AMD simply went with "FX". These processors can cost upward of $1000 US, surprisingly most people spend roughly this amount on an entire system. Therefore it is obvious these processors are only designed for those seeking the ultimate performance, or a processor that can meet the demands of their ultimate graphics card. Over the past month I have done a considerable amount of benchmarking with the GeForce 8800 GTX, and it has been difficult to create a computer that is capable of exploiting the full potential of this graphics card. Although this graphics card can deliver breathtaking performance with an Intel Pentium D 930 processor, it is far more spectacular with an E6700 for example. When upgrading from a $150 US Pentium D 930 processor to a gutsy Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 processor, which costs a measly $500 US, even higher frame rates become available. The question is, how much do you have to spend in order to reap the full benefits of owning a GeForce 8800 GTX graphics card? Well today I plan on finding out just how fast you need to go in order to achieve this. Of course the latest and greatest processor is not necessarily required to benefit from the awesome power of a GeForce 8800 GTX graphics, it just helps. Previous tests have proven that when using slower processors, such as a Pentium D 930 for example, there are still ways of making the GeForce 8800 GTX work hard. This is done by forcing the GeForce to utilize its extreme memory bandwidth. By maxing out not only the resolution but also the FSAA and Aniso settings, the GeForce 8800 GTX really has to go to work and with a processor such as a Pentium D 930, the average frame rate is not greatly affected. This article will test the GeForce 8800 GTX with the maximum FSAA and Aniso settings enabled with the highest level of in game quality settings. There are a range of processors right now that I could use to test the scaling performance of the GeForce 8800 GTX, but I feel there are none better than the Core 2 Duo series, for the moment anyway. That said, I have also included some Athlon64 X2 processors as well, but I must stress this is not an AMD vs. Intel comparison. Rather we will be looking at how the processors frequency impacts the performance of the GeForce 8800 GTX. This will help users decide if they can get away with a cheaper Core 2 Duo (for example) or will they need to spend big? |
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