cpu slowing down a graphics card!?

i was posting on a game forum today about an upgrade linked to a game (tes4 oblivion) and was told this:

i have a p4 775 3ghz.

i know a lot of people on games forums tend to post before thinking, can someone here confirm if this is right? this forum is one of the few places that the advice tends to be right lol. i would ahev thought that a good gpc would take some of the pressure off the cpu and wouldnt be limited by it!

thanks in advance for any help

 

Buy the card. It will be loads better than what you have and you can always consider a CPU upgrade later if you take those comments seriously!

 

well i ahve gone for it and got a 7800gt overclocked version and a new pci-e mobo, i know it will boost my spec a LOT from a 9600 lol. but can anyone confirm or rubbish what that guy said, could a 3ghz chip really be too slow to handle a card like that, i find it very had to believe tbh.

 

A lower power CPU may be running at 100% all the time during game play. That means in theory it is bottlenecking the game and you could be doing better with a faster chip. However memory, HDD speed and motherboard configuration all have an effect also. Using the AMD model a 3000+ on socket 754 using single channel memory will not be as good as a 3000+ on a socket 939 with dual channel memory etc, etc. There is more to be taken into consideration than just CPU speed/rating.