Gaming performance

Quake 4
We tested Quake 4 by running our own custom timedemo with and without its multiprocessor optimizations enabled. These can be switched on in the game console by setting the "r_usesmp" variable to "1".

Above the following benchmark graph, and throughout most of the tests in this review, we've included Task Manager plots showing CPU utilization. These plots were captured on the Pentium Extreme Edition 965, and they should offer some indication of how much impact multithreading has on the operation of each application. Single-threaded apps may sometimes show up as spread across multiple processors in Task Manager, but the total amount of space below all four lines shouldn't equal more than the total area of one square if the test is truly single-threaded. Anything significantly more than that is probably an indication of some multithreaded component in the execution of the test. Because WorldBench's tests are entirely scripted, however, we weren't able to capture Task Manager plots for them, as you'll notice later.

NVIDIA's video drivers are now multithreaded, so we should see some amount of multithreading action happening in any application that uses the GPU for 3D graphics, even if the game is only single-threaded.


With "r_usesmp 0"


With "r_usesmp 1"

Just like that, we see a new order being established. The three Core 2 Duo chips capture the top three spots, with even the E6600—at 2.4GHz and $316—outperforming the Athlon 64 FX-62. The Core 2's advantage over the Athlon 64 X2 is similar to the one the AMD chips have held over the Pentiums for so long. Obviously, there's utterly no contest between the new Intel processors and their predecessors. Will this pattern hold in other games?

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
We tested Oblivion by manually playing through a specific point in the game five times for each CPU while recording frame rates using the FRAPS utility. Each gameplay sequence lasted 60 seconds. This method has the advantage of simulating real gameplay quite closely, but it comes at the expense of precise repeatability. We believe five sample sessions are sufficient to get reasonably consistent and trustworthy results. In addition to average frame rates, we've included the low frames rates, because those tend to reflect the user experience in performance-critical situations. In order to diminish the effect of outliers, we've reported the median of the five low frame rates we encountered.

We set Oblivion's graphical quality settings to "Medium," 800x600 resolution, with HDR lighting enabled. Our Oblivion test is a quick run around the Imperial City Arboretum.

The Core 2 processors show up strong again here. Only the E6600 falls behind the FX-62, and the Core 2 Extreme X6800 cranks out roughly twice the average and minimum frames rate of the Pentium Extreme Edition 965.