X-bit labs

Core 2 Duo E6420, E6320 and E4400 Plus Another 15 Sub-$200 Dual-Core Processors (page 7)

Category: CPU

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 03/18/2007 | 07:30 AM ]

Gaming Applications

The situation in contemporary games is quite logical. Core 2 Duo processors offer the best performance here. AMD CPUs from the Athlon 64 X2 family show much lower fps rate. As for the old Pentium D processor family, these guys can no longer compete neither with Core 2 Duo, nor with AMD rivals.

Besides a few real games, we have also included the results of two benchmarks based on Valve Source code that will be used for future games development. The first benchmark estimates how fast the testing participants cope with building the lighting maps, and the second – evaluates the performance during environmental physics processing.

Typical computational task, building lighting maps is performed faster on Core 2 Duo processors. As for physical calculations, the results are not so straightforward here. Athlon 64 X2 processors on the older 90nm core work as fast as the Core based CPUs. However, newer 65nm Brisbane core that finds its way into dual-core AMD processors cannot yet boast good results. Athlon 64 X2 based on Brisbane core is not fast enough because of its slower cache. By the way, we observe similar situation in regular gaming benchmarks, too, although this tendency stands out most vividly in Valve Source particle benchmark.

We have also included a chess benchmark on Fritz 9 engine into our gaming test session.

All in all, the situation here is hardly any different from what we have seen in 3D games. Core 2 Duo processor family ensures higher performance.