Gaming: Strange Brigade (DX12, Vulkan)

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 which 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. AMD has boasted previously that Strange Brigade is part of its Vulkan API implementation offering scalability for AMD multi-graphics card configurations.

AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List
Game Genre Release Date API IGP Low Med High
Strange Brigade* FPS Aug
2018
DX12
Vulkan
720p
Low
1080p
Medium
1440p
High
4K
Ultra
*Strange Brigade is run in DX12 and Vulkan modes

All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.

Strange Brigade DX12 IGP Low Medium High
Average FPS
95th Percentile

[words]

Strange Brigade Vulkan IGP Low Medium High
Average FPS
95th Percentile

Strange Brigade is another game that’s hard to tease CPU results out of at default settings. We’re clearly GPU-limited at 1080p medium, and have to drop down to 720p low to spread apart the CPUs. Once we do, the 9900K takes the lead, with the 9700K right behind it. Here Intel’s latest-gen flagship is still working hard to offer more than a 5% performance advantage over last year’s 8700K. Also, did I mention that everything faster than a 7700K is delivering 400fps or better?

Gaming: Ashes Classic (DX12) Gaming: Grand Theft Auto V
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  • DominionSeraph - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link

    The 8700k is also pulling 150W while the 8086k is 95W. Something's not right there.
  • _mat - Wednesday, November 7, 2018 - link

    There can be two reasons why that is the case:

    1) The mainboard settings for Power Limits were different.
    2) The 8086K ran into Power Limit 1 while the 8700K was not.

    Whatever is the case here, it is no doubt that the 8086K did run into Power Limit 1 after the "Time Above PL1" (= power budget) was depleted. The 95 Watts are exactly the specified TDP of the CPU and Intel recommends this as Power Limit 1 value.

    So the problem here is that the Power Limits and Current Limits of the mainboard are not properly documented and seem to differ between the test candidates. While the 8086K obviously had Power Limits in place, the 9th gen CPUs were benched with no limits at all (only temperature limit at 100 °C on a core).

    Also, the whole page on power consumption needs rework. The TDP does matter depending on the board and its default settings.
  • ballsystemlord - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link

    Ian! Many of your tests ( Y-Cruncher multithreaded, apptimer, FCAT - ROTR, WinRAR ), are taking too short of a time. You need some differentiation here! Please make them harder.
  • R0H1T - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link

    >In case the previous comment was missed.

    I see that the last few pages have included a note about Z390 used because the Z370 board was over-volting the chip? Yet on the Overclocking page we see the Z370 listed with max CPU package power at 168 Watts? Could you list the (default) auto voltage applied by the Asrock Z370 & if appropriate update the charts on OCing page with the Z390 as well?
  • mapesdhs - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link

    "Intel has promised that its 10nm manufacturing process will ramp through 2019, ..."

    Ian, what promises did Intel make 2 years ago about what they would be supplying now?
  • eastcoast_pete - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link

    My guess is that Intel is now printing those promises in 10 nm font size (easily readable with a standard electron microscope). See, they moved to 10 nm by 2018!
  • ballsystemlord - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link

    Actually, fonts are measured in points. So, it's 10pt, and it's rather legible.
    But, as for products, I don't see any either.
  • darkos - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link

    nice review, but: please add a flight simulation such as x-plane and prepar3d or fsx. this is an area that is sadly, missing from your reviews.
  • kasboh - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link

    Do I see it correctly that there is little benefit of HyperThreading with 8 core CPUs?
  • eXterminuss - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link

    I am quiet shocked to see that Anandtech is using a vastly outdated and in parts plainly wrong description for World of tanks:
    1. The enCore engine ist being used in world of tanks for quiet a while now (10 month)
    2.World of tanks is a free to play game, no elements hiden behind a paywall, e. g. no more features for a paying customer than for a freelooter.
    3. Since the outadted EnCore benchmark was used, i would have at least expected to see the Results of that benchmark being posted aswell.
    Sincerly yours,
    eXterminuss a World of Tanks Player

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