Originally Posted by Ailos
WoW on the other hand, has pretty rudimentary graphics, not the least because it was originally released back in 2004. But it IS an MMO, which means the CPU has a lot more work to do tracking all the players' actions (which aren't scripted, so have to be done real-time), and is a lot more taxing on the CPU.
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I disagree with this. Path finding for an AI is WAY more taxing than someone, or a dozen, running around.
Player input, that is movement, looking ect. is easy because it's on human time scales and a CPU is just way beyond that.
The issue is what calculations the inputs spawn. BF3's sound system is pretty involved for instance, latency-compensation for player movement, physics for the dozen objects an explosion spawned.
If these things are game-play important and not optional, every system has to do them. That's why you need "good enough" and after that it doesn't matter much at all.
The northwood-Celeron with a 690 would be able to run at high nearly as well as it would run on low - it would run like crap in all settings.
Something in the last 3 gens of i5 or better probably will probably be above the bar and the graphics card will be the main differentiation in performance.