HD 7970: Bulldozer vs. Sandy Bridge vs. Nehalem @ techPowerUp

Articles like these are really fun to read since it puts real numbers to a system type based on your video card instead of the other way around.  Of course we have already determined that DX11 performance is largely dependent on your GPU and less so on your particular motherboard so keep that in mind when looking over the charts.

In our CPU scaling article we investigate gaming performance of AMD's latest Radeon HD 7970 flagship. The processors in our test group have been selected to match popular CPUs used by gamers and enthusiasts: AMD FX-8150 Bulldozer, Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge and Intel Core i7-920 Nehalem.

This begs the question, who would benefit from an article like this?  Simply put overclockers.  Most folks won't be building a system specifically for an HD7970 and if they are they have too much money and really should be concerned with how many 7970's to buy vs what processor to run (implying they already have the best proc).  

One thing you will notice in the article is that the author doesn't call out that any system has been overclocked meaning that the Core i7 920 is running stock while the Core i5 2500k is running faster and with less threads.  Not really a fair comparison.  So why are the 3DMark 11 scores so close?  

I'll let your little hamster wheel churn on that for a bit.

Related Web URL: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970_CPU...