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What exactly does a faster CPU do for a computer system as far as gaming is concerned? Why is a good CPU better than a good video card? What exactly does it mean when one says a slow CPU will make a fast video card "choke?" And what does it mean when someone says something "uses up CPU cycles?"

Balence is everything, a super fast video card is useless on a P3/500 system. On the other hand a 3.6 GHz CPU with a GF2 MX video card is equally a waste for games.

Everything in the computer plays a part and together determine if the computer is fast or sluggish.

Why is a good CPU better than a good video card?

If a game or application relies more on the CPU than the vid card. In most games however they rely on the vid card, but if you have a slow CPU, you will notice a difference. Again, everying inside plays a part.

What exactly does it mean when one says a slow CPU will make a fast video card "choke?"

Simply put, its a bottleneck and the vid card is not taken to its full potential because the CPU is the bottleneck. Balance of processing power is imbalanced so to speak.

And what does it mean when someone says something "uses up CPU cycles?"

It means the cycles to process whatever the CPU has to process for the main program is being used by another application, like a task tray program or the like. To use up cpu cycles means that its calculating something. When you have multiple apps doing stuff, the cpu cycles is divided up amongs these programs. So if you want to have your program run faster, you usually shut down background programs to remedy the "use up cpu cycle by another program" problem so whatever program you want to run faster will have more cycles to perform better. Think of it as computer concentration.

Does that make sense? If you want to find out how it works there are tons of articles on the net you can Google search for.

When gaming, the CPU and videocard each have their own parts to calculate. If you've got a slow CPU your videocard will be hanging around wating for the CPU. Of course you can always turn on AA and AF to put the video card to better use.

As far as something taking cycles, it's just that. The item is using the CPU to caclulate something for it.

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