CPU really has nothing to do with grass calculations. The things the CPU handles are AI and Physics mainly. The video card does pretty much everything else. And a Core 2 (of any speed) is unable to bottleneck such a weak card as a 7600GT. Not that a 7600GT is a garbage card, it's not. It's just that it's not nearly powerful enough to be bottlenecked by a Core 2.

Your humble pie, sir....

Listen, faced with what i have seen turning graphic options on or off in isolation with fraps on and switching back to taskmanager to look at cpu activity, for both games, that is the only conclusion you can draw, namely that the cpu is heartily involved in some graphical operations. although in oblivion the card draws the grass, the cpu i would speculate actually simulates the grass in the game world and implements the swaying algorithym and perhaps also calulates shadows on to it. As far as the total war series goes, I would not be alone if i said that the engine is quite cpu reliant, not just simply ai and mechanics, but the shadow side of graphical operations. If you look to benchmarks where the effect of the grade of cpu is under the spotlight, in some games its performance can have a huge effect on in game fps. Namely a x2 3800 can have just 40% of the fps of a 6700 core 2 or extreme in Oblivion for example, where the vid card was a 8800gtx.

Well when the new heatsink arrives I'll take my 6300 to 2.4ghz and post the results/observations. Really, what else would you make of the behaivour i described in my original post!

Yes, that's because an 8800GTX is so stupidly powerful that almost any CPU except a Core 2 can limit it. What you don't seem to be understanding is that a 7600GT is just way too weak and crappy to be bottlenecked by a Core 2. Maybe a Pentium 3 could bottleneck it but never a Core 2.

The other thing you don't seem to be understanding, is that the CPU is at 100% because it is calculating AI, and processing the game thread(s). It is in no way contributing to rendering of any kind. If you want proof of how terrible even Core 2s are at rendering video, download 3dmark03, 05, or 06 and run the CPU tests. Where the video card might get 30FPS, the CPU gets 2FPS.

The problem is your video card so go get a new videocard. We know what we are talking about and we are trying to help you but we won't be able to solve your problem if you keep insisting that you are CPU bound and refuse to listen to everyone else's advice.

Hey MetalX, cool it dude.

I really have to agree with MetalX on the fact that your GPU is the bottleneck, and not the CPU. CPU bottlenecking is generally unheard of in games, although recently its found that the 8800GTX would shift the bottleneck from GPU to CPU.

Of course, if you're adamant that its your CPU bottlenecking your whole system, you are more than welcome to conduct your own tests and find out for yourself. In fact, if you discover something that noone else has discovered before, you're doing pretty well. Of course, methodology would count here, simply overclocking your CPU and finding a 2fps increase isn't going to rock the enthusiast computing community. Unless you had 1fps to start with....

As far as most of the enthusiasts know, most things graphical (including shadows, grass, etc) would be handled by the GPU. We also know that the GeForce7600 is a pretty low end card, compared to the other stuff you can get around these days.

Anyway, feel free to overclock the CPU, and report back to us. Like I said, you might be on to something.

The only thing you could be onto is the fact that something might not be installed correctly. That could cause your CPU to work too hard, and cause lag in games. Sorry for getting mad earlier, it seems I have to learn to keep problems in my life from making me lash out at people on internet forums .

I wouldn't discount that the CPU has something to do with rendering some graphics, but if there's such a significant bottleneck like you mentioned, it should affect every aspect of gaming performance, not just on one specific came, at one specific setting. It just doesn't make sense at all.

Thanks for staying interested!

Hi, yes well ok im now a few posts behind, yes i know the vid card aint the greatest, but observing what i did, which is exactly how i wrote it on the board, the idea that its cpu related is quite compeling. Theres only one way to settle this, which is to post overclocking results. Yeah i might get a 4fps increase,which wont set the world on fire, nor even my underwear for that matter, but it would prove the point. Well, thats whats got me interested in overclocking my cpu, but not really my gpu, as i dont see the greatest all-round return for it, and as I might as well wait a while and upgrade when the card has had some good use, say 6 months, and then go out and buy its natural successor, the 8600. That would be kinda nice cos I would have had each cards intended replacement! (6600, 6600gt 256mb agp (not that easy to find!), 7600gt and then 8600) cant really include 6600 in that lineage i guess as its too close, but the step up to the 6600gt was actually larger than i imagined.

Thanks for the interest guys, dont worry about getting mad, i kinda wrote with a tone intended to do that! sorry.....

If it was really a bottleneck, a 10% overclock should see a roughly 10% increase in fps.

If you had 100fps to start with, and a 10% overclock gave you a 2fps increase, that would've happened anyway if the CPU wasn't the bottleneck.

You'll almost always see increase in performance if you overclock, instances where this doesn't happen is when something else is a severe bottleneck (gaming with a 6200LE, and overclocking your QX6800 for example).

I hope you get the idea.

Yeah totally, im not expecting miracles, but making my 6300 an approxiamate 6400 or taking it further to 2.4ghz would be handy anyway. I expect to get something proportionate to the overclock in fps improvement terms, and i might go for a mild overclock on the graphics card too sometime after this, but im not expecting much bearing in mind i wont change the stock vga cooler anytime in the near future just for overclocking purposes as it seems like too much hassle for not a great deal of return, but, well, we'll see! As for strange bottlenecks, well there shouldnt be anything wrong with the setup, latest nvidia drivers, p5b deluxe motherboard, ddr2 800 and processor all check out fine on cpuz and what have you, plus its defraged regulary, and ad-aware and virus swept. I was a huge bf2 fan but now too busy, so i'm well up on chopping back services and startup programms on the msconfig util (to free up memory). Those loading times on my old 34.5gb p4 were horrendous could anyone get lower than 117mb commit charge by the way???

Well, as said, results on there way when they arrive, i'm pretty anal so they'll be thorough!

I'm not sure if 8600s are going to be released. They probably will be but Nvidia is planning to release the G90 (Geforce 9800GTX) within a year. Lets just hope they don't make a model called the Geforce 9800PRO or 9800XT Wouldn't that cause a hell load of confusion.

lol or the cut price 9750, well i mentioned it cos i saw some pics supposedly from a chinese web-site where they know about such things, oh well...

would be nice to make a cut price step up to dx10, but then again i always wanted to have something that was once top of the line, just to say i owned it once. Tried to get an x850pte but out bid on Ebay last year, maybe i can have another go next year on one of those 7900gtxs or 1950xtxs everyone will be trying to get rid of (well, i do need some convincing to splash out on vista any time soon)

It wouldn't really be worthwhile getting a 7900gtx or 1950xtx. They'll still be expensive, newer cards of about the same price would be of much better value.

Of course, you get to boast about owning "the best of the series".

The best I've ever owned (within a series) was an X800XT. And a few months later, they released the X1950XTX (in case you're wondering, I didn't get it when it was first released). But I can boast about owning the best ever AGP card, when it was the best

BTW, cooling your GPU has the potential to give the best bang for buck when it comes to overclocking. With the abovementioned X800XT, I spent AUD$50, and managed to sqeeze 25% more core & ram, which resulted in the same increase in fps on games which were running slow (ie: X3 Reunion). I can't see how that wasn't a good move.

Of course, you get cards like the X1950Pro which has very little headroom. Spending $50 on it would be a waste of money, unless you're looking to lower system noise.

Pretty irrelevant this, but just updates what i wrote earlier, pc now fixed and ready for overclock, fitted zalman 9500 blue led copper monster, silver 5 paste and creative audigy S.E sound, to replace the onboard asus job thats total pants. Temp differences are amazing, full load in a warm room brings CPU temp to about 36 degrees celsius after 15mins, with heatsink fan and 2 case fans (140mm&120mm) on lowest setting. The dust clogged intel HSF managed about 60 celsius plus. Audigy is good replacement for onboard audio. Overclocking results will come when i have time, next week.

Lol... the Zalman 9500 would kick the standard cooler's **** anyday.... If it had one


Looking forward to overclocking results.