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. We take the average frame rate as our marker with a scripted version of the built-in benchmark.

For this test we used the following settings with our graphics cards:

Alien Isolation Settings
  Resolution Quality
Low GPU Integrated Graphics 1280x720 Ultra
ASUS R7 240 1GB DDR3
Medium GPU MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB 1920x1080 Ultra
MSI R9 285 Gaming 2G
High GPU ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB 1920x1080 Ultra
MSI R9 290X Gaming 4G

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

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

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

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

Alien Isolation in this case favors a higher IPC, and so as a result the Intel processors are quite high on the list. The biggest differences are when using the high-end graphics cards: the R9 290X and the GTX 980, which give a 10-20% increase in favor of the Pentium.

Stock Comparison: Legacy Gaming Comparison: Total War: Attila
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  • Meteor2 - Saturday, July 16, 2016 - link

    Thanks. It's a little more complex than i3/5/7-nxxx, where n increments by one each generation...
  • TheinsanegamerN - Monday, July 18, 2016 - link

    cariizo cores use the excavator design. excavator is core design, carrizo is the product line.
  • Mokona512 - Saturday, July 16, 2016 - link

    Please do this test with the Phenom II series in order to understand the generational IPC changes, and also providing a better point of reference for the Zen CPUs. The Zen claims are based on IPC changes from a CPU series where there was a drop in IPC.
  • Ian Cutress - Monday, July 18, 2016 - link

    I recently redid a Phenom X6 in Bench, though that's absolute chip perf and not exactly what you're looking for, but it's there :)
  • Elizabeth king - Sunday, July 17, 2016 - link

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  • lwatcdr - Sunday, July 17, 2016 - link

    I find AMDs low cost offerings really interesting but this just doesn't work for me. The Carrizo on the desktop just seems too limiting. I wish that AMD would update the AM1 line. It is so inexpensive and can support a good number of PCIe lots. For things like a NAS, media pc, or even a Chrome box/low end pc they seem like a really good choice except that they have not been updated in years.
  • silverblue - Monday, July 18, 2016 - link

    Puma+ is kind of like what Atom did with their earlier Atoms, a more efficient version of Jaguar. I'm surprised that they didn't just lock the turbo and produce these in Jaguar's place, unless it's not cost-effective to do so.

    The cat cores are dead now, which is a shame as we never got to see how a dual channel memory interface would improve their performance.
  • Eris_Floralia - Monday, July 18, 2016 - link

    Another great review. I've translated all articles about Bulldozer architecture into Chinese in order to let people know why it didn't success. I believe that an eight-core Steamroller or Excavator would be competitive, but that never comes out.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Monday, July 18, 2016 - link

    it wont be competitive, excavator is still far behind intel is performance and in TDP, and cant overclock at all. And it is still 28nm and cache limited.

    AMD really needs to kill the bulldozer line. It is AMD's netburst.
  • Eris_Floralia - Monday, July 18, 2016 - link

    well, with some adjustments, steamroller can still reach high frequency. with additional L3 and larger L2, the problem with excavator may get solved. I mean that latest bulldozer architecture can do better than present piledriver, but the improvement obiviously doesnt worth a try.

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