Crysis Warhead
We measured Warhead performance using the FRAPS frame-rate recording tool and playing over the same 60-second section of the game five times on each processor. 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 results. In addition to average frame rates, we've included the low frame 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 tested at at relatively modest graphics settings, 1024x768 resolution with the game's "Mainstream" quality settings, because we didn't want our graphics card to be the performance-limiting factor. This is, after all, a CPU test.

In our first indication of the Phenom II's real-world performance, the Phenom II X4 940 essentially matches the Core 2 Quad Q9400 in terms of average frame rate, but the Phenom II's minimum frame rate is slightly higher than the Q9400's. Not bad.

Those of you looking for clock-for-clock comparison of CPU architectures might want to pay attention to how the Phenom II X4 920, at 2.8GHz, matches up to the Core 2 Quad Q9550 at 2.83GHz. That's not an exact match, but it's very close, and the Q9550 has the full 6MB of L2 cache per chip that the, um, non-neutered 45nm Core 2 parts have. As you can see, Intel's Core 2 architecture remains very potent on a per-clock basis.

Doing a clock-for-clock comparison with the Core i7 is complicated by that processor's Turbo mode feature, which raises clock speeds by up to 266MHz if there's thermal headroom available. Even the slowest Core i7 here, the 920, may be running at up to 3.2GHz, especially in our gaming tests, since most games don't take advantage of more than one or two CPU cores.

Far Cry 2
After playing around with Far Cry 2, I decided to test it a little bit differently by recording frame rates during the jeep ride sequence at the very beginning of the game. I found that frame rates during this sequence were generally similar to those when running around elsewhere in the game, and after all, playing Far Cry 2 involves quite a bit of driving around. Since this sequence was repeatable, I just captured results from three 90-second sessions.

Again, I didn't want the graphics card to be our primary performance constraint, so although I tested at fairly high visual quality levels, I used a relatively low 1024x768 display resolution and DirectX 9.

Here's a nicer result for the Phenom IIs, as they reach into Core i7 territory. Can they keep this up?