Shock horror - video cards have a greater impact than CPUs overall on games! Matching your CPU to your GPU has been something that gamers have done for years to make sure that their graphics card was not hampered - since when has this ever been an "endless topic of conversation"? Its like asking whether a better clutch or bigger engine makes a car go faster or not - yes you need a decent clutch to put the power down, but that power comes from the engine. Come on THG - this is not up to your usual standard of asking interesting questions - if you want an endless topic of conversation, try the age old sync / async RAM operation issue.

The overclock potential of a cpu is far greater then a gpu.
The entry level cpu in a series have almost as much overclock potetial as a high end one, sometimes even more due to fsb clock.
The most bang for the buck is to had with a entry level cpu in a current series opverclocked, combined with the best grahics card in your budget (save money on cpu and put it towards gpu)

This review is fantastic. It is best for people who want to see difference between their current configuration and performance gains between old and new hardware per buck.
E.G. If someone has a 8600GT and a low spec CPU, it makes no sense to buy a new graphics card as this review coroborates the relation between GPU AND CPU.
Great stuff Tom's.

Why do you mention overclocking? Anyway, entry level CPUs have less cache and a slower bus speed - none of which can be gained back by overclocking - and then you have to spend loads on a good heatsink (for any clock speed increase worth talking about) which means you may as well have bought a better CPU in the first place.
Also, Mackayde, the fact that you said 'coroborates' makes my point for me - this is ground already covered - we all know that mid range goes with mid range etc... for the best bang for the buck & price/performance ratio.

These test are being made for people who have doubts about cpu/gpu performances, not all people are genius like you david t to know the differences among these 2 chips. Dont take yourself to be too intelligent by trying to contradict thg because I sincerely think you are not that intelligent, you a_sh_le

good for me to know as i have just upgraded to a dfi x48 board and e8400 , i currently have a 8800gt on it but as its a crossfire board im intending to get the 1gb 4870 when its released at the end of the month , my sons machine is an athlon 64 3ghz with pci-x , so it kills two birds with one stone as he can have my 8800gt and get a very good machine also in the process.

Great Review

"Anyway, entry level CPUs have less cache and a slower bus speed - none of which can be gained back by overclocking"

Err, of course you can make the bus speed faster by overclocking. What THG is suggesting is that the hit you get from using a cheaper CPU (i.e. less cache, lower bus speeds) can generally be dialled out by overclocking the CPU to death. i.e. run 3DMark on both, I bet you can easily get the same of better results from a lower prices CPU and many of the premium units.

Great article. At this moment i got very low spec CPU - P4 HT 3.0, ASUS P5KC mainboard, 4GB of Ram and HD 4850 graphics card. I am not very satisfied with overall performance of my machine. I want to upgrade a CPU but I was not sure what kind of performance boost i got. Now I know THX THG

Very useful article for me - in the process of component hunting for a new PC (upgrading from a P4 2.8, 6800GT (AGP) and 1gb of RAM - yep old stuff indeed) For me the fact the CPU needs to be around 3Ghz to get the best out of the Graphics card is the most useful bit of advice i could get right now, thanks THG

Its sad when "know it all" computer nerds stroke their e-peen by slagging off a feature that is almost definatly going to be useful to countless others.

Its people with david_t's attitude that give other techie types who may already know all this a bad name.

Yes, great article. I have a similar setup to goldfish above and am looking to upgrade now too - glad I searched this out.
Cheers