cpu importance
Posted: 10.07.2008, 23:08
is your cpu speed really that important when playing a 3d game (ex: world in conflict, crysis etc...) if you have a good graphics card(ex:8800gt, 9600gt ...)??
Terry,
This forum is really for discussing Celestia, not games. If you're primarily interested in gaming, and not in Celestia, you should consider asking your questions on a game-related Forum.
For Celestia, at least, the CPU performance is very important. There are many positioning parameters which have to be recalculated for every visible object before the next frame can be displayed. Graphics chips are not used to calculate them, since the algorithms are not easily translated into a format that the graphics chips can use.
However, it certainly is possible to use graphics chips for more than just graphics display calculations. Modern graphics chipsets are much better at many types of calculations than are modern CPUs. Nvidia seems to be in the lead in providing compilers intended to make it possible to use graphics chips for general purpose computing.