Quote Originally Posted by roofsniper View Post
i think you are forgetting the point. i am talking about smoothness here. not how fast a task can finish that has absolutely nothing to do with how smooth it is. and i am not talking about min and max fps either. what does that have to do with it? lets say you have an amd getting a max of 50 fps and a min of 40 fps and an average of 45 fps. then you have an intel getting a max of 70 fps and a min of 45 fps and an average of 50 fps. how big of a change is the drop from 70 fps to 45 fps going to be? you will be able to tell thats for sure. even if the amd has a lower minimum fps and a lower maximum if it can keep the frames coming out at a more consistent pace and within a reasonable amount of the intel cpu it should be smoother.
But this is not a case of AMD being smoother or more consistent, it is a case of AMD being slower and therefore unable to push to the same frame rates when the situations switches to be more CPU limiting. Using your criteria, a Phenom 9400 would be even smoother and consistent than a Phenom 9950 as the Phenom 9400, while reaching roughly the same minimum frame rate when GPU limited, would be unable to hit the same maximum frame rate when CPU limited.


only way i can think of testing this is by taking fps measurements at many different intervals and comparing them. because by comparing max fps average fps and min fps there is no way to tell which one is smoother.
JumpingJack has done some investigation into this matter using his own QX9650, Phenom 9850 and 4870X2 and posted results in this thread:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/Forums/...d.php?t=197423

Here are the direct links to some of the results that provide a frame rate plot over time:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/Forums/...&postcount=235
http://www.xtremesystems.org/Forums/...&postcount=285
http://www.xtremesystems.org/Forums/...&postcount=364
http://www.xtremesystems.org/Forums/...&postcount=391