Date:
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Author:
Kyle Bennett
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Intel Core i7 and Gaming

We take our Intel Core i7 processors ranging from 2.66GHz all the way up to 4GHz and turn them loose on Ubisoft’s FarCry 2. It is a great game but does it need a new CPU to give you a better gaming experience? The results even surprised us.

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FarCry 2 – Core i7 vs. Core 2

What we are showing you below is a clock-for-clock comparison between Core i7 Extreme processor model 965EE at 3.2GHz with triple channel DDR3-1600 (8-8-8-24) and Core 2 Extreme processor model QX9770 at 3.2GHz with dual channel DDR3-1600 (8-8-8-24). We are also adding in the Core 2 Duo E8500 which is a dual core processor (as opposed to the quadcore 965EE and quadcore QX9770). The E8500 runs at 3.16GHz with dual channel DDR3-1333 (8-8-8-24) memory support.

We had a lot more data on our previous graphs as we had the Core i7 940 and 920 included, but there was simply too much information to digest and the graph was a mess. I think the clock-for-clock numbers tell the tale here and it is equally important to see how the dual core E8500 stacks up next to the quadcores as we know many in the hardware community have invested in these “Duo” processors.

As we talked about on page 1, we are trying to keep a somewhat “real world” approach with the use of FarCry 2’s built in benchmarking tool. Given that we have found “Very High” quality settings to be playable on most of the current generation video cards that is exactly the timedemo quality setting we went with here. This is of course a timedemo, so it is a bit more objective or scientific which many people certainly seem to prefer when it comes to CPU evaluation. Do keep in mind that while our “Ranch Small” timedemo is a scripted fly-by it does have certain aspects to it that are very dynamic. The Non-Playing Character AI is turned on in this demo as well as the fire being dynamic (as is many things that catch on fire and violently explode), so it is impossible to get exact duplicate timedemo scores. And let’s state here that FarCry 2’s benchmarking tool is no way similar to methods we have seen used in Crysis benchmarking. We will have an upcoming realworld gameplay CPU scaling article that will focus on FarCry 2 as well. It will be interesting to compare the results to our testing here when it is all done.

In the interest of full disclosure, we have put our FarCry 2 testing profile online along with all of our results files shown on this these pages. Please go through the data yourself as well as use our testing profile to compare on your own system. We would love to see your thoughts posted in the HardForum.

Our scores here were verified three times. We are using NVIDIA 180.43 BETA drivers and Windows Vista 64-bit with SP1 installed. The biggest difference in our two setups, besides being different chipsets, processors, and motherboards, is the amount of DDR3 RAM. Our Core i7 machine is equipped with 6GB of triple channel DDR3-1600 while our Core 2 machine has 2GB of dual channel DDR3-1600 memory. Neither machine however reaches beyond or even up to the 2GB limit while running any of these tests. We are using an Intel SSD hard drive on each system.

965EE (4 core w/HT) vs. QX9770 (4 core) vs. E8500 (2 core)

Yes, this graph is quite busy, but I think laying the numbers out in this fashion is very important for you to see as it truly paints a picture about Nehalem and gaming. I have tried to simplify the layout, but there is just a whole lot of data to represent in order to get the point across and it is quite important that you get a grasp of the performance scaling before you run out and drop you hard earned dollars on a Core i7 processor for a rig built expressly for gaming.

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The first thing you will notice about the above performance is that the 3.2GHz Core 2 QX9770 outperforms the 3.2GHz Core i7 pretty much across the board when “Very High” quality is used in the game. This is not true for low quality settings, but we don’t think that our readers are going to be playing FarCry 2 without they eye candy turned on. The simple fact of the matter is that our readers do not buy these expensive hardware setups to run at low resolutions and low graphical settings. That said, we scaled our results all the way down to 640x480 so you could see the entire scaling path for yourself and make up your own mind.

What is more interesting to me than our quadcore performance is how well the dual core E8500 stacked up against both the quadcore processors. We can clearly see where FarCry 2 was dual core CPU limited until we hit the 1600x1200 mark with AA turned on. From 1600x1200 with 2xAA up in FarCry 2 I think it is safe to say the game is GPU limited in our GeForce GTX 280 configuration. There is room to argue about 1920x1400 0xAA still being CPU limited, but not much. From our results here we can say that the Core i7 at 3.2GHz is not as good a performer as the Core 2 at 3.2GHz in FarCry 2 and once you cross the 1600x1200 0xAA mark, you are going to have a hard time discerning the 965EE from the QX9770 and even the E8500 with this graphics card configuration.