which hardware bit effect which game settings?

[iron man]

do different bits of hardware affect different game settings? if so which hardware affects what settings?

e.g. does a cpu affect post processing or does a gpu affect it?

what im basically trying to find out is if seperate bits of hardware have a connection to the different settings you can change in a game.

i just got a brand new system (see sig.) but im still waiting for my gpu so im using my 9600gt.

now my previous computer was as follows:

cpu: q9400
gpu: 9600gt (same one im using now)
ram: 3gb ddr2 800mhz
psu: 500watt
hdd: 160gb

so now what im trying to understand is if i was running say for instance crysis warhead on specific setting on my old pc, are there settings i can push UP on my new pc that is not affected by the gpu?

thanks

 

[ToxicBunny]

On your new machine your 9600GT will pretty much be the bottle neck.... maybe even on that old system of yours.

 

[iron man]

i know its going to be a bottleneck thanks but thats not what im asking. thats just and example. im asking if different pc hardware affects different settings more then others

 

[ToxicBunny]

Yeah, they will.. and it all depends on the stuff you want to do...

Usually with games though, you're talking visual settings aren't you which will pretty much all be bottle necked by the GPU nowadays...

 

[Conradl]

do different bits of hardware affect different game settings? if so which hardware affects what settings?

e.g. does a cpu affect post processing or does a gpu affect it?

what im basically trying to find out is if seperate bits of hardware have a connection to the different settings you can change in a game.

so now what im trying to understand is if i was running say for instance crysis warhead on specific setting on my old pc, are there settings i can push UP on my new pc that is not affected by the gpu?

thanks

Will try to answer this as best as possible....

Different hardware components can impact game settings, although it depends on the game. For example, physics is very intensive on the CPU, so a faster CPU will enable you to run physics better with less of a performance hit (although your GPU also does physics now).

Another example would be an RTS, where increasing the amount of RAM and processing power would potentially enable you to have bigger armies at a higher difficulty level (assuming each unit required memory and CPU time).

Sound cards with advanced engines allow for different sound effects and mapping of different environments that cannot be achieved with certain sound cards.

Sorry I can't be more specific, but it does depend a lot on the actual game....

 

[ToxicBunny]

Yeah thats the problem..

Depends on the actual game and the type of setting you're doing and your exact system setup...

 

[Chevron]

With an rts cpu definitely has an effect on the slowness one experiences when there are vast amounts of units in the game. Supreme commander for one plays faster with more units the better your processor is.

 

[iron man]

Will try to answer this as best as possible....

Different hardware components can impact game settings, although it depends on the game. For example, physics is very intensive on the CPU, so a faster CPU will enable you to run physics better with less of a performance hit (although your GPU also does physics now).

Another example would be an RTS, where increasing the amount of RAM and processing power would potentially enable you to have bigger armies at a higher difficulty level (assuming each unit required memory and CPU time).

Sound cards with advanced engines allow for different sound effects and mapping of different environments that cannot be achieved with certain sound cards.

Sorry I can't be more specific, but it does depend a lot on the actual game....

ok thanks man. if its not too much to ask and if you can could you list which settings each bit of hardware has the most effect on

 

[Conradl]

ok thanks man. if its not too much to ask and if you can could you list which settings each bit of hardware has the most effect on

Sure no problem, if you could give me a list of the settings, I will try to list the relative impact of each component on each setting.

 

[cerebus]

well multiple cores, clock speed, multithreading, cache size of the CPU will affect game speed dramatically depending on the optimization in the game - e.g. GTA4 is multi-core dependent whereas some games prefer an e8500. post-processing is a gpu-dependent factor. Some games prefer faster gpu ram whereas others prefer more shader cores.