High Performance Gaming on a Budget: Athlon II vs. Phenom II vs. Q9550S

World in Conflict

World In Conflict is set in an alternate history Earth where the Cold War did not end and Russia invaded the USA in 1989 and the remaining Americans decided to strike back. World in Conflict (WiC) is a real-time tactical/strategy video game developed by Massive Entertainment. Although it is generally considered a real-time strategy (RTS) game, World in Conflict includes gameplay typical of real-time tactical (RTT) games. WiC is filled with real vehicles from both the Russian and American military. There are also tactical aids, including calling in massive bombing raids, access to chemical warfare, nuclear weapons, and far more.

Here is yet another amazing and very customizable and detailed DX10 benchmark that is available in-game or as a stand-alone. The particle effects and explosions in World in Conflict are truly spectacular! Every setting is fully maxed out. First at 1920×1200 resolution with our HD  4870-x2:

Now at 1920×1200 with our GTX 280:

World in Conflict at 1680×1050 with the HD 4870-X2:

And now at 1680×1050 with the GTX 280:

The HD 4870-X2 is really handicapped by two factors with our Athlon II and Phenom II X2s.  First, their stock clockspeeds are not enough to keep World-in-Conflict minimum framerates even in the low teens; an overclock is required to do that.  Secondly, it appears that the tri-core 720 X3’s third core makes a definite difference over dual-core although the sheer +500 MHz advantage of the Q9550S overclock gives it a solid advantage in the minimums and even some advantage in the averages.

This same pattern with our HD 4870-X2 is repeated with the GTX 280 – clock speed matters and evidently more than a dual-core CPU is needed for the minimums of World-in-Conflict.  We even note that our Intel quad-core CPU at 3.1 GHz is pulling away from the AMD tri-core clocked +400 MHz higher.