Hi Guys,

I just wanted to drop a note, that I'm too busy to contribute these days, but I'll post back, once I get some numbers for you ...

Cheers,
Maggi

I'm looking forward to your results! Don't forget!

Neil

Another facter that could be missed is the hard disk. Got a new top of the line hard disk or an "old" hard disk? Cache on it? Is it defragged regularly. An IDE, SATA2, or (if lucky) a 10,000 RPM SCSI?

HDD are importatnt for Loading times and file movement.
Performance will increase in games that dynamicaly load content, e.g. WoW or Two Worlds.

IDE is the oldest and slowest transfair type, somebody who wants performance get a newer one.

SATA(2) is current the standart (at least im my litle world) good transfairates and compatible like an old IDE.

SCSI is an server Technology, so the HDDs are not created for being shutted down serveral time a day. So you have to get an external housing which keeps the Disks permantly online wich prodicing noise and heat.

I prefer an other Server Technic: Raid
Not with SCSI, ofcurse. 2 ore more SATA(2) on a raid controller in Raid 0. So you can Write on two HDDs n the same time -> 2x Data rate, plus Writing and Reading at the same time.
One disadwantage is there: If one hdd goes to hell every data is lost, so you have to keep an seperate backup.

Hi Neil,

sorry for the delay, but I'm still too busy to finish gathering hard numbers.

So far, I found out that the answer to your initial question is: "it depends on where your bottleneck is"

In my case, I was doing incremental upgrades over the last few years, starting out with an Athlon XP 2400 (DDR-266) and a Matrox Parhelia 256MB

First upgrade was a Radeon 9600 non-pro with 256MB RAM -> nice boost, fair price
Second upgrade, Radeon 9600 pro with 128MB RAM -> marginal boost, used part, cheap
Third upgrade, NVidia 7800 GS -> big boost, incredibly expensive
Fourth upgrade was replacing mainboard, RAM & CPU to my actual config (X2 3880+ EE, DDR2-800) -> big boost, used parts from eBay, fairly cheap

Interestingly, the latter configuration provided an enormous boost in most situations, but there are also a few numbers, where performance actually decreased compared to the former config ... go figure !

However, it might take another week or two, until I finished benchmarking and until then my recommendation is that anybody should try to find out the weakest link in their respective hardware configuration and opt to upgrade that part.

Cheers,
Maggi

Holy Mo ... time is flying these weeks !!!

Anyways, benchmarking several configurations and digging my harddrives, I found some numbers that date back to the beginning of this millennium ...

Back then I was running a Celeron300A (Mendocino) @ 504MHz, which got upgraded by a Celeron2-566@850MHz and my trusty G400 @ G400 MAX speeds got replaced by a Matrox Parhelia, before I upgraded MoBo and CPU to an ASUS A7V-333 with an Athlon XP 2400+ (Thorton) and afterwards the Parhelia got replaced by a Radeon 9600 non-Pro with 256MB, which eventually made room for a Radeon 9600 Pro with 128MB, only to be replaced by my actual nVidia 7800GS (AGP), which is still present in my actual setup of an ASRock 939Dual-VSTA, sporting an Athlon X2 3800+ EE @ 2500MHz and 2GB DDR2-833 via AM2CPU upgrade board



As you can imagine, it is quite a time consuming process to gather and align all those numbers, so please bear with me, that I'm still not done yet.


However, I just found an excellent article covering this very topic right here:

http://www.digit-life.com/articles3/vid ... tions.html

They even have an interactive chart system, which lets you compare various upgrade options and it gets very clear that for gaming purposes a gfx card upgrade results in a tremendously bigger boost of framerates than upgrading the CPU ...

Cheers,
Maggi

PS: I'm having some odd issues with the Crysis Demo, showing heavy screen corruption, unless I have the shaders set to max quality ... is that a known issue ?

Hi Guys,

I'm terribly sorry that I was never able to finish my personal survey on this topic.

I'm just too busy and on those rare occasions that I have some free time on my hand, I have other/better things to do.

...

Fortunately, Tom's Hardware was covering this exact topic to a great extend and to gie you a quick summary of his findings, I'll just say that in general, upgrading the GPU offers greater performance boost than upgrading the CPU.

Have a look for yourself here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu ... ,1928.html

Best regards,
Maggi

Thanks for sharing

It seems like a faster CPU helps to some degree, but it has to be balanced with the CPU. A pitty they didn't include any AMD/ATI hardware. Maybe they behave different ?

So it's good for the 3D gamer to focus on GPU, but if only some GPU's work with a special Stereo driver you could get some FPS with a better CPU - and upgrade the GPU later when it's worth it.

HI Luke,

as I initially claimed, it depends on where your bottleneck is.

If you have a powerful GPU already, you might end up getting a big boost from upgrading your CPU.

I doubt that AMD/ATI hardware would result in any different conclusion.

In my case, I got a noticeable gain from upgrading my former Radeon 9600pro to my actual 7800GS when I was still running on an AthlonXP 2700+, but when I upgraded the mainboard CPU and RAM to an X2 3800+, I got another noticeable gain, simply because my newer GPU wasn't getting saturated from the older CPU.

Cheers,
Maggi

I've just upgraded my processor, from p4 2.4GHz to p4 3.4GHz (socket 478, yes, still) and passed the 3dmark tests and the aquamark3 before and after replacing it. I'm using a nvidia 6600GT and 2 GB of DDR 400 RAM. Driver is 162.50 and the same for stereo driver. Here are the numbers:
It seems that a 6600 can eat simple textured polygons like nothing, so the quicker processor means a great performance rise with old graphic engines (say 3dmark01). But with more modern graphics the bottle neck is the 6600 and the values are almost the same.
These are just raw graphic power numbers. In practice, the games and simulators do more things than graphics and I can see a general fps increase. But what makes the expenditure worth is that this processor has cost me three times less than what it cost some years ago. With normal prices the upgrade is not justified (in my case! not in general)

As a side note, I have enjoyed a lot seeing the 3dmark tests in 3D, specially that one of the globus flying through the cannon in 3dmark05. Even with the extremely low fps it was a real pleasure for the eyes. It's a good idea to have it on the computer to show to family and friends how S-3D enhances the visual experience absolutely.

Thanks for making the trouble and posting it here.
I think it could be 'tranlated' for more modern systems, although many more cores don't bring a performance boost necessaryly...

Well additionally to the numbers you could say, that the FPS per eye are cut in halves, while the real FPS stays alike.

I asume, you used SGs for S3D, right? I noticed, that using anaglyph reduces the performance a little more, because you make 2 pictures like for pageflipping first. Then you add the conversion to anaglyph and this needs some power, too

Yes, shutterglasses.

Ok, I'll create a signature with my stuff.

in my experience it depends on what your working with really but a general rule of thumb is that the graphics card is most important, then cpu, then ram.

i built my computer about a year ago, for as cheaply as humanly possible.

a pentium dual core e2140, 1.6ghz stock. overclocked to 3ghz.
2gigs patriot ddr2
gigabyte ga-p35-ds3l
sapphire hd3850 256mb

then with a case and psu, hard disk etc it was about 650 bucks. i can still max out most games and get 30+ fps. except for crysis, which eats my rig alive.

anyway i always suggest getting the cheapest cpu you can live with, overclocking the crap out of it, and buying the best videocard you can afford.

i also had a celeron 300a back in the day, and a riva tnt i think, that was my first build.

anyhow with my current rig i got 27-29fps average in crysis cpu demo, all settings high 1280x800.

with my own custom cvars i can add about 10fps to that, and honestly you cant tell the difference.