Quote Originally Posted by boxleitnerb View Post
Even shooters can be CPU bottlenecked in certain locations (Crysis 3, Serious Sam 3...), it all depends on the fps you want to have/sustain (and if you have a strong enough graphics card or if you're willing to turn down the graphics settings a bit to get those fps GPU-wise). PCGH.de, a German website, does excellently documented CPU benchmarks, real gameplay, no GPU bottlenecks.
Turning down the graphics settings reduces the GPU load and your CPU gets more influential to your fps, that's nothing new.

I'm not going to play Crysis 3 at anything but max details with a 3770K + GTX Titan, that's my choice & scenario, and in my scenario we both know that what my chart shows is true and right.

Turning the game settings down will change things ( how much ? depends on the settings & the downgrading level ).
But you can't invalidate results with that argument.

Btw Nizzens results are fine because they show the (rough) potential what you get by using a faster CPU. 36% more fps with 36% higher clocks (5 GHz vs 3.6 GHz - all core turbo). You can btw look at the fps, alt-tab out of the game, change clock speed and go back in and observe the change. That way it's perfectly reliable as you don't have to move or reboot. The results you posted are not really useful since they are GPU bottlenecked and don't show the benefit of a faster CPU. It doesn't make sense that a 4.7 GHz 2600K isn't faster than a 4.3 GHz one. It wouldn't be much, but it would be measurable at least in scenes where the CPU load is high.[/QUOTE]

Alt-tabbing out of the game isn't a good idea, sorry, most games do not like that and you'll get inconsistent results even at the very same system clocks & settings.
The 2600K stops scaling there simply due to its IPC, architecture in general and the GPU bottleneck.
As long as we don't have low level access to BF3's engine, we can't tell where the Ivy Bridge increased perf. increase comes from ( could be anything, more efficiency in the Physics calc. thread, etc etc ).

If you're an "eye candy gamer" with a high-end system, you usually game at max details ( in-game ) and AA/TrAA/AF usually, and in that case it is totally indisputable that regardless if you're gunning with a 4.5GHz 3770K or a 4.7GHz 4770K, you'll have the very same performance at high resolutions & maxed game settings ( *maybe some RPG/strategy/mmo games could be an exception, don't know, I said I can't play these kinds of games ).

You can see a plethora of games tested just like BF3 in the chart above here