For the most part, we ultimately make our purchasing decisions based on price. If we have $200 to spend on a processor, it doesn"t matter how fast an Extreme Edition runs our apps and games unless it sells for $200. It"s the price point that determines what our options are, and then we look at the best performer at that price point to make our final decision. But when upgrading, it"s sometimes difficult to know when to upgrade various components - especially a CPU.
If you have a 2.4GHz Pentium 4, is it worth it to upgrade to a 3.4GHz P4 in order to get greater performance in Doom 3? Or is your 2.4GHz P4 paired up just fine with a NVIDIA 6800GT? These next set of graphs are designed to help you see the type of CPU scaling you can expect out of a high end card like the GeForce 6800 Ultra, or a slower card like the Radeon 9800 Pro.