Widescreen Gaming Forum

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-hd5870-cpu-scaling.html

Pretty good article. Though I wish they included a C2D Quad cause you cant really compare C2D vs i7 and say its simply (dual vs quad).

But this line at the end does make it seem like i7 is the way to go:

Using this setup, I could quickly switch from the system with a dual-core CPU to the system with a quad-core CPU and feel the difference between them in the same parts of five games. Excepting S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, I easily felt the difference such games as Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X., Resident Evil 5, Call of Duty 5: World at War and Crysis. The gameplay was much smoother on the quad-core CPU, without occasional jerks as on the Core 2 Duo. Game levels were loaded faster, too. So, the numbers don’t always provide the full picture, yet I hope that this test session will help you decide what CPU you need for one or two Radeon HD 5870 cards.

Very good article. I have a c2d 6850 at 3.5. Not enough power to PROPERLY drive a 5970 but can't spend to much money at one time!!

Ah . Good. I'm pairing a 5xxx with my 3.3ghz E6750 and i was expecting the CPU to hold it back bit, and that shows on those benches. But I'm upgrading to q9550 before long. Going to wait for i7 sytems to come down at least a bit...

spanks.

Actually, IMO that article was a bit hit 'n' miss. 'Twas good that they covered 'the range' of CPUs, but by only having a Core 2 Duo it makes it nigh on impossible to work out how a Core 2 Quad will compare.

Still, it does how how CPU dependent the high-end graphics solutions are.. :)

I think the phenom tests were dubious too.

Legionhardware has one of i7 and phenom scaling. But I would really like to see C2D vs C2Quad vs i7 vs Phenom...