CPU Limitation Issue

You have just purchased the latest Nvidia 6800 video card and you eagerly install it in your PC. The first thing you do is to run a few benchmarks and catch some fps to it's awesome performance. But by your disappointment you find out that the fps are the same you had with your previous card. What is wrong? You missed something during the installation or you got a faulty product? Not at all, instead something you haven't thought of is an other issue that holds back your high-tech VGA card from showing off it's true capabilities. The CPU limitation issue.

In CDRinfo's latest review with Gainward's CoolFX 6800 Ultra I experienced low for it's kind fps. It's absolutely wrong to have a 1200 Mhz (6800U's core clock) beast performing alike with a Radeon Pro. To speak the truth I was quite puzzled and I never expected that a P4 2.4GHz CPU would limit a latest generation VGA card.

So after having tried everything, I decided to do some tests with a much faster CPU. And what else other than a 64-bit AMD processor. Without losing any more time I ordered an AMD 64 3800+ (2.42 GHz) processor and I run the same games and benchmarks to compare the results with those of the Intel P4 at 2.4 GHz.

I picked the latest games to perform such a task, since this would mostly interest the majority of CDRinfo's readers. So the following charts that depict the fps caught with Doom 3, Farcry and Unreal Tournament 2004 will help you out to see by yourselves the CPU limitation issue.