CPU utilization and gaming

From a performance tuning/capacity planning standpoint, are CPUs a bottleneck for gamers?

I’m not talking an old 333MHz processor. I’m wondering about >1GHz.

If you are gaming, and you have splurged on a good or top of the line graphics card, does the increased capacity of a 2GHz processor provide any benefit over a 1GHz processor?

I’ve tried googling on this, but I’m not finding anything that talks about this. I see a lot of benchmarks where they say that lower CPU utilization is better, and I saw one site that showed one processor peaked at 17% utilization while another peaked at 31% utilization and they drew the obvious conclusion that 17% was better.

And it is. But 31% ain’t bad either. That means the CPU was idle 69% of the time. That means that the CPU was not even close to being a bottleneck.

So, my question is if the CPU is not a bottleneck, what is the benefit of upgrading or purchasing a faster one other than bragging rights?

I’m betting you were looking at benchmarks comparing the CPU utilization of the Soundcard or another component. Overall, CPU utilization while running a modern 3D game should be pegged at 100%, somewhat bottlenecking the rest of the system. Anandtech recently did a comparison of value CPUs, showing that you’re still going to get a real benefit from upgrading the CPU. This High-end CPU comparison shows some diminishing returns, but faster CPUs still improve performance.