3.2G OC'd CORE i7 940 vs. 3.16Ghz Stock E8500 vs. 3.2Ghz Stock QX9770 Complete Review

[Sr7]

Nehalem could very well show those improvements computationally, but you won't see any gain if the GPU is capping the output. No amount of CPU power thrown into the equation will change the result in a GPU limited regime.

Of course, that's a given. But the sad part is I'm on a 12x10 monitor still Even at those lower resolutions like 10x7 or 12x10, where the CPU is much more of a bottleneck, we see it doesn't seem to be beneficial to upgrade to nehalem, according to these released benchmarks. This is the first time I can remember that being the case with a new gen of CPUs in quite some time. Usually Intel and AMD specifically recommend that reviewers test at 8x6 or 10x7 to see the gains of their new processors.

The whole purpose of benchmarking is to see how much you stand to gain in your experiences with your computer by buying this product right? So how much sense does it make to turn settings way down to check your CPUs gain in performance, if you don't see any of that additional performance when actually gaming at your normal/native resolutions/settings?

It's like buying a car for commuting based on it's top speed. You'll never see that speed in every-day use because you don't do that kind of driving.

Obviously there's an exception if you're running multiple GPUs and therefore putting the bottleneck back on the CPU, but most people don't run those kinds of setups.