Conclusion
Based on our testing, the sweet spot kicks in somewhere around the A64 3500+ range. Our numbers with Half-Life 2 show this most dramatically. In addition, the HL2 1024x768 results also show that the 7800 GTX benefits from the 1MB L2 cache of the 4000+ and FX processors. The scaling results on page three corroborate these findings as well, as the 7800 GTX’s performance jumps profoundly at 2.2GHz. This is probably the clock speed you should shoot for if you’re in the market for a new processor but don’t want to drain your bank account in the process; or if you can’t afford a new chip, it’s definitely the speed you should go for when overclocking.
If you’re lucky enough to afford a GeForce 7800 GTX SLI setup, you should definitely set your goals higher. In our GeForce 7800 GTX Performance Preview article, we were CPU-bound in many cases with the 7800 GTX SLI configuration even when running with an FX-55 CPU, which was the fastest processor we had at the time. We wouldn’t be surprised if 3.0GHz or more was required to truly keep a 7800 GTX SLI config running optimally.
