Alien: Isolation

If first person survival mixed with horror is your sort of thing, then Alien: Isolation, based off of the Alien franchise, should be an interesting title. Developed by The Creative Assembly and released in October 2014, Alien: Isolation has won numerous awards from Game Of The Year to several top 10s/25s and Best Horror titles, ratcheting up over a million sales by February 2015. Alien: Isolation uses a custom built engine which includes dynamic sound effects and should be fully multi-core enabled.

Alien Isolation on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560)

Alien Isolation on MSI R9 290X Gaming LE 4GB ($380)

Alien Isolation on MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB ($245)

Alien Isolation on MSI R9 285 Gaming 2GB ($240)

Alien Isolation on Integrated Graphics

Aside from a small dip by the Core i7-2600K when using the R9 285, the i3-7350K matches the other CPUs in Alien Isolation.

Legacy and Synthetic Tests Gaming: Total War: Attila
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  • Flunk - Monday, February 6, 2017 - link

    Yeah, that is funny. I'm using a massively overpowered PSU myself. I have a 850W unit running a system with a moderately-overclocked i7-6700k and Geforce 1070. Had it left over from my previous massively overclocked i5-2500k and dual Radeon 7970s, even if it's aged badly (which it probably hasn't it's only a few years old) it should still be good for ages, especially as under-stressed as it now is.
  • fanofanand - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link

    Or you could just get Ryzen with the wraith cooler :)
  • BrokenCrayons - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link

    Perhaps when they're available for purchase I'll look into it. I'm interested in seeing what AMD does with mobile Ryzen, integrated graphics, and HBM for CPUs (unlikely) and how it changes laptop computing.
  • fanofanand - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link

    The rumor mill has been churning and the consensus is that APU's will be available in 2018 with HBM. That will be a game changer for more than just mobile computing, but for small form factors as well. At least theoretically, experience tells me we should wait for reviews before deciding how profound the impact will be.
  • Flunk - Monday, February 6, 2017 - link

    The Wraith cooler is both marginal and loud compared to quality aftermarket coolers that cost as little as $35. Sure it's better than the last AMD stock cooler, but that's more a case of the last AMD stock cooler being total garbage.
  • bananaforscale - Wednesday, February 8, 2017 - link

    Hey, no dissing huge air coolers! :D (Yeah, I have one and it's so big it largely dictated the case selection. Does keep a hexcore Bulldozer at 52 degrees at 4 GHz tho.) There's also the niggle on Intel side that their enthusiast line has only made it to Broadwell-E, so that's what I'll be upgrading to. A huge upgrade in IPC (which probably won't rise much in the next years), more cores and lower power use per core. I figure I'll be upgrading next around 2025. :D I'm pondering whether I should go AIO liquid or custom...
  • MonkeyPaw - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link

    More emphasis is going into the IGP.
  • CaedenV - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link

    I doubt it is competition. I mean, lack of competition certainly explains the price per performance not coming down even though the manufacturing costs are getting cheaper, but I think that we have hit a performance wall.
    With every die shrink we can get more performance per watt... but the die is also more heat sensitive which kills stability for higher clocks. The idea that you can hit 5GHz on the new chips is nothing short of a miracle! But without a major increase in clock speed, then your performance is limited to the instruction sets and execution model... and that is much harder to change.
    And that isn't hard to change because of competition. That is hard to change because PCs live and die by legacy applications. If I can't go back and play my 20 year old games every 3-4 years then I am going to get rather annoyed and not upgrade. If businesses can't run their 20 year old software every day, then they will get annoyed and not upgrade.
    I think we are rather stuck with today's performance until we can get a new CPU architecture on the market that is as good as ARM on the minimum power consumption side, but as efficient as x86 on the performance per watt side... but whatever chip comes out will have to be able to emulate today's x86 technology fast enough to feel like it isn't a huge step backwards... and that is going to be hard to do!
  • xenol - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link

    Anandtech please do frame-time tests as well for games. Average frame rate is good and all, but if the processor causes dips in games that could lead to an unpleasant experience.
  • Mr Perfect - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link

    I would also be interested in seeing this.

    The site slips my mind, but somewhere tested multiple generations of i7s, i5s and i3s for minimum framerate and even the oldest i7s had a more consistent framerate then the newest i3s. It would be interesting to get AT's take on this.

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