Launching the #CPUOverload Project: Testing Every x86 Desktop Processor since 2010
by Dr. Ian Cutress on July 20, 2020 1:30 PM ESTGaming Tests: Strange Brigade
Strange Brigade is based in 1903’s Egypt, and follows a story which is very similar to that of the Mummy film franchise. This particular third-person shooter is developed by Rebellion Developments which is more widely known for games such as the Sniper Elite and Alien vs Predator series. The game follows the hunt for Seteki the Witch Queen, who has arose once again and the only ‘troop’ who can ultimately stop her. Gameplay is cooperative centric with a wide variety of different levels and many puzzles which need solving by the British colonial Secret Service agents sent to put an end to her reign of barbaric and brutality.
The game supports both the DirectX 12 and Vulkan APIs and houses its own built-in benchmark as an on-rails experience through the game. For quality, the game offers various options up for customization including textures, anti-aliasing, reflections, draw distance and even allows users to enable or disable motion blur, ambient occlusion and tessellation among others. Strange Brigade supports Vulkan and DX12, and so we test on both.
- 720p Low
- 1440p Low
- 4K Low
- 1080p Ultra
The automation for Strange Brigade is one of the easiest in our suite – the settings and quality can be changed by pre-prepared .ini files, and the benchmark is called via the command line. The output includes all the frame time data.
| AnandTech | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
 |
 |
 |
| 95th Percentile |  |
 |
 |
 |
| AnandTech | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
 |
 |
 |
| 95th Percentile |  |
 |
 |
 |
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
110 Comments
View All Comments
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%