Core i7 vs. Phenom II X2 vs. X4 scaling performance analysis
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 the 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.
We start our benching at 2560×1600:
Here is last year’s poster child for quad-core CPUs again showing the quads leading the duals but practically dropping too low in this benchmark except perhaps for HD 5870 CrossFire paired with our 3.8 GHz pr Core i7-920. To be fair, this built-in benchmark has issues with providing probably the worst case scenario for minimum framerates that you will probably ever see actually playing World-in-Conflict.
Next we see the results at 1920×1200 resolution.
Again, this benchmark would only have you believe that this game is only playable with an overclocked Core i7 and HD 5870 CrossFire although the quad-core Phenom II provides faster framerates than its dual-core counterpart. Now at 1680×1050 resolution:
World-in-Conflict uses more than two CPU cores and we also see increased framerate scaling with faster core speed and also reasonable CrossFire scaling. Later drivers have also improved the GTX 480’s framerates noticeably.
Flat-out amazing!!! I’ve never seen anything so epic like this. So, there was not any microstuttering in any of the above games, where the “measured” 40 fps appeared to look more like “perceived” 25 fps? I guess microstuttering is not noticeable if the measured fps is above 70-80, since half of this (45 fps) would still appear to be relatively smooth. Anything below 30 fps becomes really noticeable, so were there ever 40-50 fps instances with 2x 5870 CF that felt like 25fps or so? I’ll take your word for it, if you were actually watching 10,000 hours worth of benchmarking, ha (just kidding, don’t shoot my head off)!
Surprised there are not more comments. For a single video card it does look like a dual core is more than enough. Sure there are a few games that take advantage of four cores, but the fact remains they remain in the minority.
Bobert, I’ve been saying the same thing for months now.
Wow, very thorough and detailed article. It’s one thing to test CPU performance using a single video card, but it must take some brawn to do it for three different video configurations.
There’s so much data here to look at in so many ways. I suppose if you would have included an SLI setup we would then be able to determine how CPU speed affects SLI vs. Crossfire. If I’m looking at this data right, though, it seems Crossfire sees benefits from quad cores more than single video cards do.
Far Cry 2 seems to be a good example of this. Also Far Cry 2 shows interesting relationships between CPU and the GTX 480. The single HD 5870 doesn’t really react to CPU speed and cores the same way dual 5870s and the GTX 480 do. That’s pretty interesting.
So well done. If I only had one suggestion is that I would like to see GTA4 benched, mainly because I own it and good, thorough, and updated benchmarks of it are not easy to come by.:)
Concerning the Far Cry 2 numbers, despite being beaten with faster processors, the HD 5870 paired with the 2.6 dual core is actually outperforming the Crossfire and Nvidia setup. That’s what I find a bit interesting here.
AWESOME REVIEW.
This is EXACTLY what review websites ARE NOT putting out.
A non GPU-bottlenecked review showing how i7 really does have a significant gaming lead over Phenom II.
God you’d be surprised how many AMD fanboys still believe (and spread rumors) that Phenom II is plenty for 5870 crossfire. Psh. Plenty on today’s games maybe, but that is due to the PC gaming community being SNARED by the noob console community and their half a decade old setups.
Ok I’m ranting.
Two Thumbs!!
Raidur means it shows how Phenom II bottlenecks 5870 crossfire.
Everyone knows i7 is faster in games.
PS. I’m not Raidur.
PSS. I’m Raidur.
PSSS. Or am I?
Awesome review GJ.
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