Core i7 vs. Phenom II X2 vs. X4 scaling performance analysis

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Batman: Arkham Asylum is an action-adventure/stealth video game based on DC Comics’ Batman. Arkham Asylum is based directly on the long-running comic book’s Dark Knight character. The Joker devised an elaborate plot from inside Arkham Asylum that Batman is personally forced to put a stop to. The game’s primary characters are superbly voiced.

The game is played as an over-the-shoulder, third-person perspective action-adventure game with a primary focus on Batman’s combat abilities, stealth, detective skills and complete with an arsenal of gadgets that can be used in both combat and as exploring in “detective mode”.The game uses a “Freeflow” combat system as well as the ability to use Batarangs and the Bat-Claw. The player also has access to progressively stronger counter attacks as well as a special attack that can quickly take down a single foe. Stealth tactics includes silent takedowns by sneaking up on foes including dropping and/or gliding from overhead perches.

Batman: Arkham Asylum uses a highly modified version of the Unreal Engine 3. It does not support AA natively but must be added in and supported by the game’s developer. Unfortunately we cannot compare Batman: Arkham Asylum using our GeForce exactly against the Radeon. In the game’s control panel, the MSAA  settings are also different, depending if you play with a GeForce or a Radeon.

The developer optimized MSAA for GeForce cards in game but you must set non-optimized AA in the Catalyst Control Center with a substantially higher performance hit on the Radeons. Only the Game of the Year Edition (GotY) of Batman: Arkham Asylum supports in-game AA settings for both Radeon and GeForce cards. We have purchased that GotY edition and we have begin to test with it in our latest evaluations.

We begin testing at 2560×1600 with details maxed and with 8xMSAA applied in the game’s setting control panel for the GTX 480 and it is forced in Catalyst Control Center for the HD 5870 and HD 5870 CrossFire.

Let’s move on to 1920×1200 resolution.

Finally we test at 1680×1050:

This time we see our Core i7-920 score an advantage with HD 5870 CrossFire across the board over the Phenom II 955 X4.  However, at no point does even the Phenom II 550 X2 drop low enough in the framerate’s minimums to make play unsatisfactory, judging by this benchmark at all resolutions and speeds we tested at. The 955 X4 does gain increasing performance gains over the dual-core Phenom II as the resolution is dropped.

Using our HD 5870, we see satisfactory minimum frame rates until we get to our highest tested resolution with the Phenom II 550 X2 downclocked to 2.6 GHz; the GTX 480 suffered frame rates below 30 FPS. We note that there is some performance increase using quad- over dual-core and we definitely see framerate increase with higher CPU clockspeeds. This becomes more noticeable as our resolution decreases and the workload shifts away from the GPU.  We also notice that the GTX 480 is providing low minimums at 2560×1600 that seems to have been remedied by later driver releases.  However, we still see framerate scaling with CPU speed and a quad-core similarly-clocked Phenom II is faster than a dual-core Phenom II in Batman.