The X99 – All’s Well That’s Haswell

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The question of whether a processor’s extra cores provide instant interest or an assured future pension in the gamer’s bank account raises forum frenzies that run long past the witching hour.

Suffice to state that in every case, for a Crysis crazy, Wolfenstein wanderer, Tomb Raider tear away or Metro Maestro, the CPU would only hinder if the GPU was able to field frames with pipelines to spare and racking ones brains to cite a period when the vast majority of popular commercial and obscure independent releases demanded anything other than gargantuan reserves of pixel polishing mastery is a tough task indeed.

Seriously, do try it, cast your mind back as far as you can.  Bring to blazing illumination the moving memories of that spiritual transition into a finely filtered third dimension.  Spare deep thought for some virtuous Voodoo magic.  Those cards that lay dormant during desktop duties, then lavishly ignited the screen in a gorgeous symphony of silken surfaces.  Walls whose very pixels delighted in smooth and sparkling splendour, water with glossy waves of glowing pride, seductively subtle shading, ravishingly rich lighting, feverishly fluid frame rates and feasts of shimmering colour.  

The Orchid Righteous? the Diamond Monster? Remember those?  How about the fabled Voodoo 5 6000, that colossus that never made it to retail.  I profess to wandering and shall presently, yet begrudging bring reminisces de 3DFX to a painfully clunky conclusion, though perhaps that revolutionary era, and truly revolutionary it was, has ever since governed a GPUs onerous obligations.

Thus, an effective way to simulate a “CPU bound” scenario is to reduce the resolution and visual allure of the game in question to levels that liberate the GPU of its duties and force the former out of its arrogant recline.

Determining precisely when the balance of power tips is a puzzle specific to each title but as you’ll gather, it’s frequently when the frame rate is astronomical enough to raise serious doubts over whether any naicent or veteran extremist would earnestly favour a 5% performance boost over, say £300 set aside for some mercurial M.2 motoring.

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