No, nothing I said applies to integrated graphics. They have their place in laptops/netbooks where a balance between performance and battery life is preferred, but I can't say I'd recommend them for desktop gaming unless you're severely budget limited and have no other choice.

That being said, Intel HD Graphics chips will "borrow" from system RAM and use it as VRAM, since they do not come with any dedicated memory chips of their own. This is not always the case, as some AMD integrated graphics have HBM VRAM on-die and some Intel Iris Graphics chips come with some integrated cache memory (though that is still technically not VRAM, it does help performance).

So yes, as long as you have plenty of RAM, I am not too surprised some AAA games will run on an Intel HD Graphics chip, albeit I don't expect them to run well, since those chips are only targeted at multimedia consumption and light gaming.

To make matters worse, integrated graphics usually share power budget with the CPU. Games will usually stress both in various amounts at various times, in which cases bottlenecking may become way more obvious than on a desktop with a dedicated graphics card.

Yep, got it.

well yea, i didn't throw away my x5650 build either, you know....
when i have the space again, i will build the whole thing, special ordered asus xeon board from china into a silent plastic case and set it up as a old machine, maybe i will even use vista ^^

Now now, I understand the nostalgic appeal of running vista business or even vista home basic, but the fact of the matter is Windows 7 is everything Vista wants to be but cannot.

Remember that awful transition?

Used the skidrow version of total war warhammer to see if my system was up for the task, only to find later on that windows 7 also was required to run the game ( after buying the legal version i found out ) ... or Origin, from one day to another all vista support was cut down... damn

Had a very difficult home situation at that time so i was forced to use a haxor's 7..

Some games did not transition well btw though most seem nowadays covered.... still it feels that 32 bit games are best served on Vista

Can't agree more. the i5-10400f is a great value all round CPU at the moment (even the i3-10100f, 83€ here. Is probably cheaper to buy a new i3, board and RAM than to upgrade a old sandy/Ivy Bridge on the used market) . Who would imagine 2 or 3 years ago, Intel was the one trying to compete with prices and AMD increasing the price as much as the increase in performance(a la nVidia).

What I really miss is a good low end GPU since there are no good price/performance CPU's on the market with integrated graphics.
The GT1030 is still available and usable but a bit outdated, for me the biggest problem with the 1030 is no VGA output to use with low-res monitors (1280x1024 or 1600x900) and only 2 outputs. The GTX 750Ti is my all time favorite card and the GTX 1050 is quite cheap on the used market but skyrocketing in price in the last weeks. It would be nice to have a proper 3030 or something equivalent, in the 60-90 Euros range.
A i3-10100f with something like a RT 3030 would be a awsome combo for a cheap (300 to 350€) pc.

As always, it depends. For gaming, you only really need a somewhat strong CPU if you are going after high framerates (144 and up). If you are still stuck at 60 Hz, definitely put the money into GPU.

I have a 240 Hz 1440p monitor and the i7-7700 which I've had for many years now is still perfectly fine. My 1080-ti always caps out on utilization long before CPU comes even close (highest I've seen was about 60-70%).

Kind of need the same setup to run a software comparison. No overlocking it defeat the goal of comparing the closer to the system the better.

software still running *obvious steam and ubisoft (DRM)

47 Services
62 Processes (Steam not inc)

overall CPU use 0% (4 tasks 0.1%)
Memory used 1.6 GB -431 MB steam 1169 MB's

few unnecessary Processes still on
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2372844824

Same run less background processors
id=2372862913]https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2372862913[/url]

you can see less spikes and more balanced line (also more frames being showed and higher low FPS and higher high FPS


software clocking is the new hype

there is somewhat more to the catch, take for example this shot in 3k which has the cpu ( 10600k ) going at 30% and last time i booted cyberpunk the cpu was at 50% though this could also be due to initial loading of assets, not sure about that one, just noting what i observed in a split second

so there is also ground for the dedicated gaming modes a lot of programs offer ) i belief i have one with asus shutting down several processes during runs (

i'm using norton utilities btw ..... i'm not sure what it does but this coupled with all settings on automatic on the motherboard regarding ram and cpu stuff seems to work best

if i wanna tinker, which i don't , i need to close this