Quote Originally Posted by RealTelstar View Post
Curious too.
And if you mean real games: which ones?
Well any games really...

I would imagine that with the CPU at 4.0 GHz + and that card, you should be getting some pretty sweet gaming in pretty much any game you play.

Or is it just that it bottlenecks the card in 3DMark?

I found when I had my E8400 at 4 gigs I would get better SM 2.0 and 3.0 scores than when I had my quad at that same speed, but the CPU score would be lower. This was probably due to the 8x500 dual as opposed to 10x400 for the quad.

These results are both at 4 gigs and both with a single 3870 X2 (I can't test CrossfireX now because I sold my E8400)

E8400
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=5396645

QX9650
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=5770919

So the difference in total score for 3DMark is there, but the CPU is bumping that up because of the extra cores.

My theory is that for gaming, the E8400 would actually give a slightly better framrate (more smoothness *in theory) because the higher FSB allows the cards to open up more.

Imagine what the quad could do at 500 FSB!!! (mine doesn't go above 450)

Anyway, my point is, the fact that it's a dual core CPU lowers the 3DMark06 score, but I don't get how it bottlenecks the card.