Poll: CPU vs. graphics cards

[omgeveryone9]

So after reading articles about the Intel Haswell processors and the new Nividia graphics cards (mainly the 770M and 765M) I suddenly wondered which is more important for gaming. All feedback, as long as it is positive, neutral, or constructive is welcome.

 

[mohit9206]

For a gaming PC , graphics card is more important than a CPU.

 

[Da Orky Man]

Usually the graphics card would be the bottleneck in a system, so I'd say GPU.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

Most games rely on the graphics card. Hell, even some physics calculations are done on the graphics card, now.

Of course, you ideally want both of them to be good, along with... well, everything else really.

 

[nevarran]

The Video Card. The main component in a video card is the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), it's very name says that it's designed to process graphics.
But that's very generally speaking. Are you hesitating between two systems?
Because just saying the video card is more important means pretty much nothing.

 

[ThePuzzldPirate]

It really comes down to what you are planning to do with your comp. For gaming, a strong GPU far outweighs in performance. If your not doing that than grab a stronger CPU.

 

[ResonanceSD]

So after reading articles about the Intel Haswell processors and the new Nividia graphics cards (mainly the 770M and 765M) I suddenly wondered which is more important for gaming. All feedback, as long as it is positive, neutral, or constructive is welcome.

well they're both laptop cards with fairly similar performance, so get the 765M and you won't notice the difference.

 

[DazZ.]

Depends on the game and engine.

The Spark engine is very CPU intensive for example, whereas Frostbite would likely benefit more from a stronger GPU.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well if we are talking about gaming then graphics cards should be the top working horse, however you still need a CPU that keeps up with everything otherwise the components are limiting each other.

But you might also run into problems with bad devs that offload work to the CPU or if you are multitasking then the main processor needs some extra muscle to cope.

 

[Joccaren]

So after reading articles about the Intel Haswell processors and the new Nividia graphics cards (mainly the 770M and 765M) I suddenly wondered which is more important for gaming. All feedback, as long as it is positive, neutral, or constructive is welcome.

Question is different to what the poll asks, but W/E.
Voted other in poll as which is more important will depend on what you do with the PC.
For gaming? Graphics card. Easy. i5 processors, which aren't top of the line, will get some of the best benchmarks in games, and if they are behind an i7 it will only be by a little when gaming performance is all that is being measured.

GPU on the other hand, the higher the model the higher the performance, and usually not by a little bit. CPUs are underutilised by gaming, graphics cards are utilised to their max and are likely to be over-utilised by games like Star Citizen in the future. If you want to get the best framerate in games, go for the graphics card.

Unless the game is Dwarf Fortress. Then your GPU means next to nothing, and its mostly the CPU doing the work.

 

[Doom972]

The better the CPU, the longest you'll be able to use that PC for gaming - because if a game requires a certain clock speed, no amount of tweaking will make it work. The better the graphics card, the better graphics and performance you'll be able to get - if you have a weak graphics card, you can usually get a game to work by lowering some settings and maybe some tweaking.

Both are important, but I think that a powerful CPU should take priority. With that said, you should make sure that the graphics card supports the latest version of DirectX, OpenGL, and Pixel Shader to make sure that you'll be able to run the latest games.

It's also worth mentioning that it's much more of a hassle to replace/upgrade a CPU than it is to do the same with a graphics card.

I'm using a 2.93 GHz i7 quad core (8 logical cores) and a GeForce GTS 240 and I can run the latest games at high settings (not max settings though).

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

So after reading articles about the Intel Haswell processors and the new Nividia graphics cards (mainly the 770M and 765M) I suddenly wondered which is more important for gaming. All feedback, as long as it is positive, neutral, or constructive is welcome.

Question is different to what the poll asks, but W/E.
Voted other in poll as which is more important will depend on what you do with the PC.
For gaming? Graphics card. Easy. i5 processors, which aren't top of the line, will get some of the best benchmarks in games, and if they are behind an i7 it will only be by a little when gaming performance is all that is being measured.

GPU on the other hand, the higher the model the higher the performance, and usually not by a little bit. CPUs are underutilised by gaming, graphics cards are utilised to their max and are likely to be over-utilised by games like Star Citizen in the future. If you want to get the best framerate in games, go for the graphics card.

Unless the game is Dwarf Fortress. Then your GPU means next to nothing, and its mostly the CPU doing the work.

There's just something hilariously awesome about the way a game as seemingly easy to run as Dwarf Fortress can bring a gaming computer to its knees. Sure, the graphics are ASCII characters[footnote]although from what I understand, even in Ascii mode it's actually using a tile set -- said tiles just happen to have ascii characters on them, instead of pictures of dorfs and goblins and things[/footnote], but the game is keeping track of a downright insane number of things at any given moment. I wish the interface weren't so obtuse, because if it were even as accessible as, say, Nethack, I'd be all over it. And believe me, I've tried to play it. It really is so confusing that Nethack's interface seems downright intuitive by comparison.

OT: The rest of the posters pretty much have it. The GPU typically does more of the work when gaming, but you don't want to go so weak on the processor that it bottlenecks the rest of the system. Especially because some things are more CPU intensive than others.

 

[xDarc]

The CPU stopped being a major concern for gaming around the time Conroe/Core 2 chips came out. The main point of having a powerful CPU these days is for people who want to do video editing/encoding and e-peen benchmarks. I run a 2500-K @ 4.2 GHz paired with a 7970, if you came over and played some games you wouldn't know the difference.

 

[Strazdas]

I woted graphic card though i really really wished i could have voted for CPU. since CPUs started jumping forward and at the same time games were beigning to be made more GPU intense (graphics over gameplay, yay?) GPU became the bottlenects. In my current machine my GPU reaches its max power and in some games my CPU is swimming around 40%. now that CPU is greatly used out when im editing video, where it shines, but i really wish games were more CPU-intensive nowadays.

Capcha: lol cat
oh your just trolling now....

 

[DoPo]

So after reading articles about the Intel Haswell processors and the new Nividia graphics cards (mainly the 770M and 765M) I suddenly wondered which is more important for gaming. All feedback, as long as it is positive, neutral, or constructive is welcome.

Question is different to what the poll asks, but W/E.
Voted other in poll as which is more important will depend on what you do with the PC.
For gaming? Graphics card. Easy. i5 processors, which aren't top of the line, will get some of the best benchmarks in games, and if they are behind an i7 it will only be by a little when gaming performance is all that is being measured.

GPU on the other hand, the higher the model the higher the performance, and usually not by a little bit. CPUs are underutilised by gaming, graphics cards are utilised to their max and are likely to be over-utilised by games like Star Citizen in the future. If you want to get the best framerate in games, go for the graphics card.

Unless the game is Dwarf Fortress. Then your GPU means next to nothing, and its mostly the CPU doing the work.

There's just something hilariously awesome about the way a game as seemingly easy to run as Dwarf Fortress can bring a gaming computer to its knees. Sure, the graphics are ASCII characters[footnote]although from what I understand, even in Ascii mode it's actually using a tile set -- said tiles just happen to have ascii characters on them, instead of pictures of dorfs and goblins and things[/footnote], but the game is keeping track of a downright insane number of things at any given moment. I wish the interface weren't so obtuse, because if it were even as accessible as, say, Nethack, I'd be all over it. And believe me, I've tried to play it. It really is so confusing that Nethack's interface seems downright intuitive by comparison.

OT: The rest of the posters pretty much have it. The GPU typically does more of the work when gaming, but you don't want to go so weak on the processor that it bottlenecks the rest of the system. Especially because some things are more CPU intensive than others.

Did you try playing Adventure Mode? I found it quite easy to pick up. Erm, comparatively, I backed away from Fort Mode before. But Adventure is not too bad - I just went with the quick start guide, which covered the absolute basics, even then, I just skimmed over the guide. After I knew enough to move attack and interact, I just started slowly learning the other commands. I didn't find the learning curve that steep - yeah, it's a long climb but not that steep. Also, it's a very fun game.

And as a side note, yeah - it's not actually ASCII characters but sprites, the video card apparently doesn't understand ASCII but needs pictures. Though I'm not sure if that's the reason DF uses sprites - it clearly could run straight ASCII but it's either too much of a hassle or it's done to allow custom sprites. Or a mix of both.

Finally, yeah, CPU intensive. Sheesh - I went into a capital and things slowed down noticeable with so many NPCs also moving around. And I tell you, it's even worse if you slow down - I went and looted the fortress then due to my lowered speed, the game was also running slower. Since all other NPCs now took several actions between each of mine, my CPU usage spiked up dramatically. Going to the other side of the street took about a minute and caused the temperature to rise up with 5 degrees or so while the fan kicked into high speed as DF just maxed out one core. It was rather funny, if a bit tedious to play at that point.

 

[Yuuki]

A good balance of CPU and GPU is always recommended. However generally speaking, a CPU can be allowed to fall-back several generations while things are not-so-easygoing when it comes to graphics cards.

Say, e.g. someone running a Nehalem processor today can still see fairly solid gaming performance. However if they're still using a GPU from around that time (GTX200 series) then they're going to see some pretty terrible framerates in newer games.
Graphics cards have truly skyrocketed in performance since ~2007 at a far steeper rate than CPU's (in gaming), and so have the graphics requirements of game engines. Also game engines haven't really scaled well with multi-core processors, up till recently it was fairly rare to see quad-core CPU's getting fully utilized in games and most of them only used 1-2 cores to their max potential.

It's why consoles lasted as long as they did, because they used a unified CPU+GPU architecture and it was possible to use every ounce of processing power available (i.e. optimization)

 

[Ickorus]

Both, people get stuck on the GPU but the CPU, especially going forward, is becoming more and more important in gaming as developers try to put more on the screen at once.

 

[Requia]

Other: Generally you get a lot more out of money into graphics than CPU in gaming, but its a lot easier to upgrade your graphics card than your processor (there's only been one change to graphics card standards in the last 6 years, and it'll be a little while before new cards actually need the new standard), so if you want to build a system meant to last via upgrades it may make more sense to focus on CPU in the initial purchase.

Edit: also the Haswell is pants, a 6% increase for a 10% upgrade to wattage and 20$ more? wtf Intel.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

My answer to this poll is GPU.

If you are interested in MMO's then the CPU is more important. For single player focused games, the "bigger" the GPU you have, the better the game will perform and you will have smooth frames per second because of it.

Most PC games nowadays don't need more than an i5 processor. On the GPU side, for current games more than a GTX 560ti on the lower side (medium-high settings) and GTX 660 (ultra) you don't need.

PS: This is entirely my opinion. I am not a tech savvy, but this is what I've read or hear friends who know a lot more than me have said, because I have been in the same position to not know which piece of my computer I should upgrade.