NVIDIA Disproves Intel Core i7 Claims
Category: Video Cards, CPU's, ManufacturersPosted: April 24, 2009 08:51PM
Author: Ediseye
Between all system builders, controversy usually plays out in picking the right components for a build. One of the most important parts in a system is the central processing unit, and another is the graphics card. Obviously the motherboard also plays a key role in the overall system performance, but a good CPU and graphics processing unit usually secures the deal. Since the release of the Core i7 processors, Intel has been claiming that gaming performance could increase by up to eighty percent over other Intel processors, which is one hefty claim. NVIDIA, being a GPU company, sees the processor as a core piece of hardware, but did not believe the claims that Intel was making with its latest processor. After a little more research, the green team came to find out that these statement of performance improvement were based on 3D Mark Vantage CPU scores, which tests pretty much the processor and not too much else. This is how Intel got its remarkable number of eighty percent. NVIDIA ran some tests itself, with a E8400, a Core i7 965, a GeForce GTS 250, and a GeForce GTX 260. What they found was that upgrading a graphics card, allowed the games tested to perform faster than a CPU upgrade alone. The hitch though is that the tests were completed at a resolution of 1920 x 1200, which is ran by mainly the GPU. So while the Core i7 doesn't really help all that much in gaming performance according to the graphics card manufacturer, small gains may be noticed at lower resolutions, where the graphics processing unit is not relied upon as much; as claimed by NVIDIA.
