Counter Strike: Source - CPU speed vs. performance

[Daegon]

I was interested in looking into the correlation between cpu speed and hl2/source/css performance.

I found that with my PC, described at the bottom of this post, there was little change in performance of the video stress test with varying cpu speed.

Tests were taken with the following CPUs:
XP 1800+ (1.53GHz)
XP 2000+ (1.66GHz)
XP 2500+ (1.83GHz)
XP 3000+ (2.16GHz)
XP 3200+ (2.20GHz)

The corresponding speeds, in frames per seccond, as reported by the css benchmark are:
67.07fps
66.86fps
66.62fps
66.43fps
65.92fps

As you can see, there is a 1.7% change in fps, for a 30% change in GHz.

Other tests have shown that there is a much higher rate of change for a change in video card/ gpu speed.

So I conclude that it is more cost effective to upgrade your video card for hl2 then to upgrade your cpu.

 

[blahblahblah]

What was the video card, drivers, system specs and game settings?

Your results contradict other articles from hardware sites.

 

[Daegon]

Note: Results are all backwards, fps should be increasing as cpu increases

Asus A7N8X-X
Corsair 512MB DDR2700
Varied CPUs
ATI Radeon 9700 non pro (Omega 2.5.90)
SB Audigy Gamer
XP SP1

 

[jacen]

the video stress test doesnt feature ai and physics
nor does it feature complex geometry.

sry but the video stress test is only good for compareing feature rendering speeds. not overall game rendering speeds.

e.g.:
look at ur frames in css games itself. u will see that the performance will gradually increase with cpu speed.
(u can use demos, but they arent as good as live game tests)