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

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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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  • muziqaz - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link

    I love the price of $488 stamped all over each of the test results, while over here in UK I see price of £599 and newegg quotes $580. Even your linked amazon has it at $580. And conclusion is awesome with: "At $488 SEP, plus a bit more for 'on-shelf price'..." Since when is extra 100 bucks a bit more? :D
  • compudaze - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link

    What was the actual vcore for your overclocks?
  • HardwareDufus - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link

    I7-9700k.... an I7 that isn't hyperthreaded.... let's totally muddy the waters now Intel.... Guess they had to save some feature for the I9's $100+ surcharge...… Good grief.
  • bogda - Tuesday, October 23, 2018 - link

    How pointless is reviewers comment: "... World of Tanks gives the 9900K some room to stretch its legs..."?
    Difference between two chips in discussion is between 712fps and 681fps! Not even Neo from Matrix could note the difference.

    How pointless is discussing top of the line CPU gaming performance in 720p in any game??

    How pointless is marketing 8C/16T CPU for gamers???
  • sseyler - Tuesday, October 23, 2018 - link

    Not sure whether this has been pointed out yet, but the Threadripper prices need to be updated. For example, the 1920X is now well under $500 as advertised even on AMD's website and the 1900X goes for $350 on Newegg.
  • dlum - Tuesday, October 23, 2018 - link

    For me, listing the long-obsolete prices for AMD processors (still initial, long-outdated MSRP for 1920x $799 - whereas a simple amazon search confirms it's now for just over half of that ($431)) is clearly disrespectful and shamefull practice for a reviewer.

    It's very sad such dishonest practices found their way to Anandtech and they are so prominent here.

    Probably that's also why no one answers nor fixes those clearly misleading figures.

    (Maybe that's the cost of being able to read such anyway valuable reviews for free :)
  • sseyler - Thursday, October 25, 2018 - link

    Well, to be fair, I'm sure the editors didn't dig this deeply through the comments. They're busy people.

    Also, I think I heard something mentioned before about their graphs having some semi-automatic mechanism for listing prices and the like. I don't remember exactly, but it probably has something to do with pulling MSRP data and it's difficult to change given the way the templated graphs are generated from the benchmarks.

    I imagine it was done something like this for consistency across the site as well as not biasing prices according to specific vendors. Given the first reason, I don't know why it'd be difficult for individual editors to customize/tweak certain aspects, but maybe that needs to be revised to be more flexible. As for the second reason, there are clearly reasonable solutions, like finding the *current* MSRP (rather than the release MSRP), or selecting the lowest/median/average price among a pool of selected retailers.

    Anyway, it doesn't make much sense to me to characterize this as an instance of dishonesty, but rather a technical detail that's important enough to invest the time in it's improvement.
  • sseyler - Thursday, October 25, 2018 - link

    its*
  • zodiacfml - Wednesday, October 24, 2018 - link

    Meh. Intel owner could simply delidd and approach these kinds of performance.
    Resolution above 1080p, AMDs parts have better value.
  • zodiacfml - Wednesday, October 24, 2018 - link

    Made the comment without reading the review. The difference is a lot smaller than I expected where the only useful difference is in Ashes where AMD usually dominates due to sheer core count.
    I'd be fine with that 6 core CPU from AMD.

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