A friend of mine just got a new computer, and he's betting that since his 3GHz CPU is a full GHz faster than mine, it'll score better FPS in games and earn more 3DMarks. I'm betting that's not true, because:

His Computer:
3GHz P4 with 800FSB, hyper threading, 512K
GeForce 4 Ti4200 with 128MB DDR
256MB PC2700
Onboard sound
30GB 5400RPM hard drive (don't ask me why he only got a 30 gig hard drive!)
Win XP Home

My Computer:
Either 1.8 or 2.0GHz Northwood (I seriously forgot the clock speed, but it is northwood
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro with 256MB RAM
1 GB of PC2100 RAM
SB Live 5.1 PCI card with dolby speakers.
80GB 7200RPM hard drive
Win XP Home

So, tell me, my PC will crunch his PC in gaming, right? I've got a vid card that's like 5 times faster, a faster HDD, 4 times more RAM, and PCI sound card, which frees up the CPU's time. I really want to prove to him that GHz doesn't matter, it's the video card that makes a PC good for gaming.
Thanks for replying.

1. Your video card kicks his.
2. His processor kicks yours - but the video card is much more important.
3. 1GB won't make a difference over 512MB, but 512MB makes a huge difference over 256MB.
4. HD does make a difference, though not much.
5. PCI soundcard will free up a bit of CPU power.

Conclusion, yeah you'll whip his butt. Don't know by how much. If you're really his friend you should have helped him when he was looking for something to blow his wad on.

Yep that 9800 Pro 256mb will kill the Geforce 4 ti 4200 128mb

Not to mention faster HDD, plus you got tons more RAM than he has

His PC does not stand a chance he he

Buy the way where did you get you Video card ( 9800 Pro 256mb ) as I really want that new card to replace my Geforce 4 TI 4200 128mb

Your PC rocks

My PC Specs are

Athlon XP 2100 palimino ( waiting for AMD 64 )
1.5GB ( 1,536MB ) DDR PC2100
80GB WD 7200rpm 8MB Cache
SB Live 5.1 Digital
Win XP Home

Zero Cool

imo cpu and vid card are approximately of equal importance for gaming. Your vid card is 30% faster than his but his cpu is 50% faster than yours so he's winning so far. You both have excess video memory. You have excess system memory, but his is still adequate. No effect for memory. Not sure how much cpu offload your sound card gives but that's only a factor in extreme cases of combo sound/video demand and his HT probably makes up for it.

I guess he will win by a decent amount, especially if you both have current drivers.

Post the results when you finish, this is interesting.

first of all the 3ghz would destroy you processor hands down. If your friend upgraded to 512 MB 333mhz RAM you wouldn't stand a chance. your video card is fast and memory is large but so is his. right now yours would win for one reason and that is most games today run at around 300 -400 MB on load and with that his would swap like hell with a 5400 rpm drive which would be torture. but for everything else he wins. and by the way when you are gaming 7200 vs 5400 rpm drives only matter on loading the files..ram does the rest and except for the fact that his is 256 MB his is still slightly faster than yours.

chilly charlie

both of you run 3DMark 2001 and post the results...remember to use default settings within the program...but as far as overclocking the video and cpu, no holds barred...here's a database for video card results in 3DMark 2001 and 2003

http://oc3dmark.octeams.com/database01.html

under Ti-4200, i just got bumped from 10th to 11th place with a score of 13,343

under the 128 meg 9800 pro's, there's scores of 21,000+,but those people have cpu speeds faster than you and the lowest is 17,833 with a cpu speed of 3.19 ghz

you need to overclock both video card and cpu to come close to 17,000 and that's a guess since no one else has posted a score using your particular 256 meg vid card

i think it will be a very close race

If they both oc the vid card the friend will increase his lead since the 4200 oc's better.

3dmark won't swap if its the only program running on a 256mb system

The friend's weak link by a mile is his memory if its single-channel.

At max colors and res and eye-candy the friend's advantage decreases substantially and you might even have a shot at beating him.

I got the results, which were VERY interesting, and leaves me wondering... Listen to this:
Before we both ran 3dMark 2001SE, we ran CPU tests using PCMArk 2002. This is the interesting part. My (probably) 2.0GHz CPU scored 5670 CPU points on it! I found that totally amazing, and it's even more amazing if my CPU is actually a 1.8! Thats right up there with a 2.4 CPU. My score might have been so high because I'm running dual channel DDR, though. My friend's CPU was somewhere in the 7000+ range, though, if I remember his correctly.
As for 3DMark 2001:
Friend's computer: 12 113 3DMarks
My computer: 15 221 3DMarks
Ha Ha! I won!! (to my friend's disgust)
To answer some questions:
My friend is using single channel DDR 2700 memory, I'm using dual channel PC2100.
Zero Cool, I bought the 256MB version from a small computer shop in the small city I live in, owned by a guy I know, they always get the most recent stuff faster than lightning. It's not a chained store.
I know that the only reason I won is that my friend has a lesser video card and RAM- if he upgraded to dual channel and the same video card as mine, he'd easily whip my ass. But so far, he's too cheap.
I know that'll change though, he seemed pretty upset!

You should swap memory configs and rerun.

The database's average score for a 3.06g/4200 is much higher than the average score for a 2.0g/9800 so your situation is far from explainable. This new info about single vs dual channel is significant, but since your score is 10%-15% higher than the best score for a p4 2.0g/ati9800 score in the database (out of hundreds of scores) there might be something else about your machine not yet revealed.

Ok thanks for telling me where you bough it, as I live in the UK I will have to get it of Ebay or somewhere

Can't wait to run it in my system :)

Zero Cool

I can't belive it neither. Run the bench mark 3-times and take the average, make me a believer.

Ran PCMark and 3DMark 3 times each, and yup, each time I got a score of around 15200 for 3DMark, and 5650 for the CPU PCMark. This is a very interesting situation. I'll try swapping memory tomorrow, and running in single channel, see if it changes my results. I'll post as soon as I can. Well, I've made up my mind. My CPU isn't a 1.8, it's a 2.0.

"Well, I've made up my mind. My CPU isn't a 1.8, it's a 2.0."

George Costanza once said "I've made up my mind, I think I'm an architect"

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=435

http://download.com.com/3000-2086-8396416.html?tag=lst-0-1

http://www.voodoofiles.com/592

Any of those links lead to a handy little program called WCPUID. Download it, run it, and tell us what it says your cpu speed is. You're guesses sound a little weird.

Yeah, I couldn't remember if my CPU was a 1.8 or a 2.0 because the control panel in Windows keeps changing. Sometimes, it'll think my CPU is a 1.1, 1.2 1.4, 1.6, 1.8, 2.0, or 2.1.
I found the slip of paper that came with my computer last night, and yes, it's a 2.0GHz.

Well, I brought my PC over to the friend's house before work today, changed memory, and the scores did change. With only 256 MB of single channel RAM, my 3DMark dropped from 15 200 to around 14 400, and friend's computer (using my 1GB of dual channel) went from 12 100 to around 13 300. Ha, I still beat him, even with 4X less RAM!!
I went back to my 1GB of dual channel and I'm back up at 15 200.
I'm noticing lots of other things with that hot new 3GHz PC that my 2 GHz PC seems to do a lot better.
For example, DVDs on my friend's 3GHz PC don't play nearly as well as on my machine. On his, the video skips every once a second, and it's really noticeable in high action scenes, whereas on my machine, there's no skipping at all. Also, during DVD playback on his machine, the hard drive light is constantly on, it's like the hard drive is trying to defrag while the movie is playing, but it isn't. I do understand that DVD playing requires hard drive activity, but my hard drive light isn't ALWAYS on, mine just flickers once a second, and I get a pefectly smooth picture.
Also, my friend's computer takes longer to boot up, open MP3s and digital photos than mine. For example, my PC boots up in 15 seconds, while his takes around 25 seconds. This might be because of his 5400RPM drive, but still, I don't think the difference in speed would be that big!
I'm starting to feel sympathetic, the guy just spent big bucks on the new 3GHz computer, and it performs much worse than my 2GHz machine. I don't know why it's performing so poorly. Tell me what you think.