Launching the #CPUOverload Project: Testing Every x86 Desktop Processor since 2010
by Dr. Ian Cutress on July 20, 2020 1:30 PM ESTGaming Tests: Chernobylite
Despite the advent of recent TV shows like Chernobyl, recreating the situation revolving around the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the concept of nuclear fallout and the town of Pripyat have been popular settings for a number of games – mostly first person shooters. Chernobylite is an indie title that plays on a science-fiction survival horror experience and uses a 3D-scanned recreation of the real Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. It involves challenging combat, a mix of free exploration with crafting and non-linear story telling. While still in early access, it is already picking up plenty of awards.
I picked up Chernobylite while still in early access, and was impressed by its ingame benchmark, showcasing complex building structure with plenty of trees and structures where aliasing becomes important. The in-game benchmark is an on-rails experience through the scenery, covering both indoor and outdoor scenes – it ends up being very CPU limited in the way it is designed. We have taken an offline version of Chernobylite to use in our tests, and we are testing the following settings combinations:
- 360p Low
- 1440p Low,
- 4K Low
- 1080p Max
For automation purposes, the game has no flags to initiate benchmark mode. We delete the movies from the install directory to speed up entering the game, and use timers and keypresses to start the benchmark mode. The game puts out a benchmark results file, however this only shows average frame rates, not frame times. In-game settings are controlled by copying pre-arranged .ini files into the relevant location. We do as many runs within 10 minutes per resolution/setting combination, and then take averages.
| AnandTech | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
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All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
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Arbie - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
I din't realize how much work was being done. Thank you for maintaining this great resource.Arbie - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
And maybe consider the technically excellent and easily benchmarked Ashes of the Singularity instead of the problematic Far Cry 5. Not as popular but modern and multi-core (and a great game).BushLin - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
I suspect it's due to Far Cry 5's need for 8 threads which manifests in stutter for 6c6t CPUs in contrast to smooth gameplay on lower clocked 4c8t CPUs.Tilmitt - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link
Has anyone ever played Ashes as a game though?Arbie - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link
1000+ hours so far. Glorious in all respects including phenomenal AI. But when Ashes is mentioned someone always pops a comment like yours, which they probably just read somewhere else since it certainly isn't based on actual experience. Still hurts the game, though.driscoll42 - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
This is awesome and amazing, I can't wait to see the results. And I hate to say "But what about", but maybe, if possible, go back to some of the popular older ones? No need to retest *everything*, but the most popular CPUs pre-2010 like the i7-920, Core 2 Quad Q6600, Core 2 Duo E8600, Core i7-870, etc...ltcommanderdata - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
If they are going to test a few LGA 775 CPUs, I'd vote to also include NetBurst's last gasp, aka the Pentium Extreme Edition 965 as a really old gen reference. It'd be interesting to include it's then competitor, the Socket 939 AMD Athlon 64 FX-60, as well. I've always been curious whether Hyperthreading support allowed the Pentium EE 965 to age better than expected as multithreading became mainstream and possibly reduce the gap against the FX-60 and even early Core 2 Duo Conroe CPUs in modern software compared to the gap seen at launch.mganai - Thursday, July 23, 2020 - link
How about the dual socket LGA 771 with two Core 2 Extreme QX9650s?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNo7qoLRtkQ
aryonoco - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Epic work Ian. Epic!Now if only your publisher implemented a subscription model (a la Ars Technica) so I could still support your work withthout being bombarded by ads and tracked, I would feel a lot less guilty enjoying the fruits of your amazing work.
lmcd - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link
This 100%