Which CPU benchmarks will reprent gaming/singlethreaded performance?

[David (PassMark)]

The i7-920 was a great CPU, back in 2008 when it was launched.

[toothman]

ah yes ofc ofc i meant just for its own impact and cpu-dependent tasks, i'm pretty sure my cpu could handle a much stronger graphics card anyway

BTW the benchmark list here puts my new overclocked rating at just below that of an i7-920 stock how do you like that

[David (PassMark)]

Depending on the game, the resolution, the game settings, the video card in use, etc..

Adding 25% to your CPUs performance won't increase game frame rates by 25%. At some point as you increase CPU speed, the video card or some other sub-system becomes the bottle neck.

[toothman]

so I can just take the +25.6% CPUMark bump after overclocking and just assume it to be roughly the same benefit for gaming, depending on the game?

[David (PassMark)]

There is no one benchmark test that represents gaming, except the game itself.
All games are different and many depend on the video card, (or disk, or network speed) just as much as they depend on the CPU. Some older games are single threaded, most newer ones will use at least 2 or 3 threads.

So you can use the CPUMark value as a rough indication of how a CPU will do for gaming, but as a general rule anything above 4 cores is overkill for most games at the moment.

[toothman]

Integer Math
Floating Point Math
Find Prime Numbers
Multimedia Instructions
Compression
Encryption
Random String Sorting
Physics

I can guess (physics looks like an obvious one) but I'm really not sure.

Trying to compare before-and-after overclocking benchmarks and would like a more specific understanding of what exactly has improved.