X-bit labs

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850: Four Cores at Three Gigahertz (page 11)

Category: CPU

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 07/15/2007 | 09:00 PM ]

Gaming Applications

The only contemporary game that has fully-fledged support for quad-core processors is Supreme Commander. And you can see it very well from the results we obtained in this game. However, all other games also show that Kentsfield processors are a little faster than Conroe working at the same clock speed. It is all very simple: games are quite sensitive to the cache memory size that is why quad-core processors with two L2 caches 4MB each work faster than dual-core processors with a single 4MB cache shared between the cores.

Besides a few real games we have also included the results of a benchmark based on Valve Source engine that will be used for future games. It estimates the system performance during the calculation of environmental gaming physics.

We have also included the chess benchmark based on a well-known Fritz 9 engine into this gaming test session.