you damn right - noone is gona pay 700$ for GPU and then try to combine them with sub 150$ "APU or a i3" - nor in test, nor in real life... and why would they?... if you can afford 700$ for GPU and can not afford 350$ for 4770K... then you need reduce amount you spend for GPU and increase it for CPU - simple as that... or next time someone will complai that he can not max out his 700$ gpu cuz his sub 50$ mother board is bottleneckiing him
No one? Many. You thing that anybody out there have the money to upgrade both the gpu and cpu? You think that everyone out there knows how to build a PC that it is balanced. How many out there are with an FX or a Phenom II or an i3 or an i5 and a 290X or a 780/TI? Much more than you think. MUCH MUCH MORE.
An i5 should be able to keep up enough to not see any real benefit from Mantle. Ephemeral is a word I'd use to describe Mantle; it is both platform limited (PC) and hardware limited (AMD) (which arguably why it is so beneficial... less overheads). Over time its benefits will be dissolved when OpenGL and DirectX (12 is looking promising) integrate similar technology, both of which are found on PCs, consoles, and mobile devices.
It should, but I don't expect it to have so much positive impact like in the above results that Nvidia is showing. Also Mantle could have (I don't remember to be honest) a more meaningful impact on frame rate than it will have with a 3930K (that's why Nvidia is hiding the DirectX results in the Thief chart).
Now DirectX12 looks like and maybe it is Mantle, but with 1.5 years more time for extra testing. Nvidia will use Mantle then, when it will be with a name that will not make the marketing department to jump out the windows. They could use Mantle today, but they don't. I wouldn't either if I where in their position.
I would certainly hope not. Who, spending that amount of money, would build such an asymmetrical system? There would be no point buying a 780 to throw into an i3 system, as any benefit over say a 770, would be less due to bottlenecking. Best buy an i5/770 combo, for example.
I already answered that. Most people are not like us spending hours everyday on line reading specs and charts. They will have a specific budget and they will go and build a PC based on that budget. I have seen many buy a $400 cpu and use the on board graphics to try to play games and then when they see that they can't they go out and buy a GT630 with 4GBs of RAM. Or others buy the strongest graphics card they can, and then go for a 4GHz quad core cpu - that sounds OK doesn't it? Quad core. 4GHz. Or in other words call me 750K for example. Others go out and buy a $300 cpu a $300 gpu and then a 800W NONAME PSU to save $50. Not to mention systems that are pre build from big OEMS or shops. You can read many specs there and laugh and do many faceplams.
