Gaming Tests: Deus Ex Mankind Divided

Deus Ex is a franchise with a wide level of popularity. Despite the Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (DEMD) version being released in 2016, it has often been heralded as a game that taxes the CPU. It uses the Dawn Engine to create a very complex first-person action game with science-fiction based weapons and interfaces. The game combines first-person, stealth, and role-playing elements, with the game set in Prague, dealing with themes of transhumanism, conspiracy theories, and a cyberpunk future. The game allows the player to select their own path (stealth, gun-toting maniac) and offers multiple solutions to its puzzles.

DEMD has an in-game benchmark, an on-rails look around an environment showcasing some of the game’s most stunning effects, such as lighting, texturing, and others. Even in 2020, it’s still an impressive graphical showcase when everything is jumped up to the max. For this title, we are testing the following resolutions:

  • 600p Low, 1440p Low, 4K Low, 1080p Max

The benchmark runs for about 90 seconds. We do as many runs within 10 minutes per resolution/setting combination, and then take averages and percentiles.

AnandTech Low Resolution
Low Quality
Medium Resolution
Low Quality
High Resolution
Low Quality
Medium Resolution
Max Quality
Average FPS
95th Percentile

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

CPU Tests: Encoding, Synthetic, Web Gaming Tests: Final Fantasy XIV
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  • mitox0815 - Tuesday, April 13, 2021 - link

    "Just abandon"...those clocks you dream of might have been possible on certain CPUs, but definitely noton a broader line-up. The XPs ran hot enough as it was, screwing more out of them would've made no sense. THAT they tried with the 9590...and failed miserably. Not to mention people could OC the Northwoods too, beyond 3.6 or 3.7 Ghz in fact...negating that point entirely. As was said...Northwood, especially the FSB800 ones with HT were the top dogs until the A64 came around and showed them the door. Prescott was...ambitious, to put it nicely.
  • mitox0815 - Tuesday, April 13, 2021 - link

    *not on
  • TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, March 31, 2021 - link

    Netburst was built for both high clock speeds and predictable workloads, such as video editing, where it did quite well. Obviously it royally sucked for unpredictable workloads like gaming, but you could see where intel was heading with the idea.
  • Oxford Guy - Wednesday, March 31, 2021 - link

    'you could see where intel was heading with the idea'

    Creating the phrase 'MHz myth' in the public consciousness.
  • GeoffreyA - Friday, April 2, 2021 - link

    "MHz myth in the public consciousness"

    And it largely worked, even in the K8 era with the non-enthusiast public. Only when Core 2 Duo dropped to lower clocks was it accepted overnight that, yes, lower clocks are now all right because Intel says so.
  • Prosthetic Head - Tuesday, March 30, 2021 - link

    Your point still stands, however P4 was also a VERY low bar for to measure IPC improvements relative to.
  • Hifihedgehog - Tuesday, March 30, 2021 - link

    Well, Bulldozer was too and look what AMD did with Ryzen...
  • Oxford Guy - Saturday, April 3, 2021 - link

    AMD had a long time. 2011 is stamped onto the spreader of Piledriver and that was only a small incremental change from Bulldozer, which is even older.
  • Oxford Guy - Saturday, April 3, 2021 - link

    And, Bulldozer had worse IPC than Phenom. So, AMD had basically tech eternity to improve on the IPC of what it was offering. It made Zen 1 seem a lot more revolutionary.
  • GeoffreyA - Saturday, April 3, 2021 - link

    "It made Zen 1 seem a lot more revolutionary"

    You're right; and if one compares against Haswell or Skylake, one will see that the Intel and AMD designs are crudely the same from a bird's-eye point of view, except for AMD's split-scheduler inherited from the Athlon. I think that goes to show there's pretty much only one way to make an efficient x86 CPU (notice departures are disastrous: Netburst/Bulldozer). Having said that, I'm glad AMD went through the BD era: taught them a great deal. Also forced them to start from scratch, which took their design further than revising K10 would have done.

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