hey essaion, I'm not arguing about whether Chad had a valid point or not, I think he does have a valid point and the article has been updated with the extra VGA info on the "test setup" page; I do have an issue by how he addressed himself to us; what might have been a funny remark in real life, doesn't transform itself nicely into text format and if he had included maybe a smiley here and there we would interpret his post differently; as it stands though, he just came over as a rude person who shows no respect.

Wow ! Thanks for your very quick input, both of you !

leeghoofd > Sure a high-res test only shows the GPU limitation in GPU-intensive games like Crysis. At first i wondered why you didn't test at 800x600, or even 640x480 to get rid of the GPU ! Then i read your conclusion on this bench, and agreed with the tested point : E7400 seems to be close to E8600. Even though it may have been more visible on lower resolutions...

jmke > OK on both points : glad to know the setup page is updated (i didn't re-check this), and yes, spoken and written languages are quite different ;)
It just seemed (to me) a quick and overweighted reaction. But that's your call, so i'm not going to argue anymore.

See ya !

Most users at lans still game at 1280 res max (most own 17-19inch monitors) Only the rich kids lol, have bigger monitors to support higher resolutions...

It's my B'day this weekend, maybe I get a bigger screen too lol

but I doubt that for sure, my girlie loaths PC's lol

gamers have 20~22" now Leeghoofd, which means 1680x1050 or 1600x1200 resolution:)
1280x1024 is passé
those investing €150 in a CPU, €250 in a VGA, can also spend €250 for a 20~22" LCD:)

enthusiasts are using 24~30" screens, which means 1920x1200 up to 2560x1600, there are only a handful games out there NOT bottlenecked by the VGA ; and even then the difference is raw CPU speed or cache is minimal

Erm. With this argument, one may ask "why did you test with a GTX 285 GPU, since i can't afford it ?". As far as i understand it, the point is "E8600 vs. E7400". So benchs should use low resolutions, to point out the differences between those CPU.

Yes, i'm wondering what performances one can expect at 1920x1200, and yes, tihs wasn't the goal of this article to discuss this. So i have no answer to this question, and that sounds OK to me ;) I'll dig it myself !
FWIW, in Crysis (not Warhead) Natural-modded / XP SP3 / DX9 / Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz / GTX 260 @ 666 MHz, i get about 30 FPS at 1920x1200 in play (no filters applied, since Natural mod is so sweet out of the box). So 72 FPS at 1280x1024 seem consistent. Knowing this, i guess the GTX 285 should output about 35~40 FPS at 1920x1200 (gamer mode / DX9 / XP). "Et voilà", i'm satisfied ;)

Many reviewers, including myself, apply this approach when we want to say something about the difference in 3D performance of a processor. However, in an exchange of thoughts with a fellow hardware enthousiast, it became apparent that this approach doesn't make any sense, simply because no one games at 800x600 or lower. The results obtained via this approach tells us nothing about the performance difference in daily gaming situations. Furthermore, how significant is the difference if you artificially increase the difference? I'd say .. close to nothing.

That's the reason why I won't be 'down-resolution'ing anymore :).

it can be fun to see if a certain tweak has any effect on the system overall, you can use 2D benchmarks, 3D benchmarks, or use games at low resolution if the component you are tweaking is not the VGA, it will allow you see some artificial increase in performance in those games; but doesn't relate to real-world performance;

Massman > I totally agree with you, speaking of a specific component review. If i wanna know, say, the performance of a GTX 285 at 1920x1200, i'll look for reviews of GTX 285 cards. But if i wanna know which one pick between, say, the E7400 and the E8600, i'll try to find comparative tests that try to point out the differences, even though it means "artificially increased" differences...
Of course, it's also good to know how it performs with real world usages, but that's a bonus. To say it more precisely : testing games at 640x480 should point out the differences. And another test at 1680x1050 would let anyone know what performances to expect "in real life".

Oh, by the way, i managed to find some GTX 285 reviews :
- Some GTX 285 on Guru3D
- The TrustedReview... review. Well, ya know.

About 37 FPS at 1920x1200 / DX10 / Vista / No-AA : seems like the interpolation i did is quite right ;)

why look so far; 615 hits: http://www.madshrimps.be/index.php?a...D%3A11&hl= en :D

I had 2 vidcards 9800GTX and the 285 at home... with the 9800GTX I would have hit a brick wall for sure in Crysis (unless I would have gone low detail or res level) And I didn't want to run low res nor detail level. So I picked the 285 for the game test, not to impress users or to show off hardware. I picked these detail settings as users will run that, what's the point ot indicate a 10fps difference at low detail level as not many will play the game like that. I see no absolutely no specific reason to test at 800 x 600, even if it would point out a bigger difference between the two CPU's. As the difference becomes way less at daily used resolutions, be it 1280 or above. 1024 and 1280 are still common, 640 and 800 are for sure not.

Anyway you see the CPU's behave much alike, once the CPU speed is increased and the benefit of the extra cache gets less important.


Each will choose his own approach to review. I prefer to see in a review what I experience daily. One of the reasons I would never want to do GFX cards reviews as readers will always have something to say about detail level chosen, res tested at , driver version etc.... it's never good enough ( surely not for the fanboys )

One cannot satisfy everyone, one can just try... I try to keep my reviews as simple and straight to the point as possible.