Gaming Performance with Battlefield 2 and Black & White 2

The gaming performance of the Core Duo is not as cut and dry with respect to the Pentium M as some of the other performance tests, mainly because the vast majority of games are still single threaded.  Here, we have to rely on the FP/SSE optimizations in games to overwhelm the increase in cache latency to give the Core Duo any sort of advantage over the Pentium M. 

Battlefield 2

Under Battlefield 2, we're able to see a small 3% performance advantage over the Pentium M. However, compared to the Athlon 64 X2, the Core Duo does not stand a chance. 

At higher resolutions, the performance advantage decreases in this particular game.  What performance at lower resolutions does tell us is that in this type of AI/physics load, the Athlon 64 X2 is a much better performer than the Core Duo, which does have some importance for performance in future games. 

Black & White 2

Media Encoding Performance with DVD Shrink, WME, Quicktime and iTunes Gaming Performance with Call of Duty 2 and F.E.A.R.
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  • vailr - Monday, December 19, 2005 - link

    Re: Chipset Drivers used in the review:
    nForce4 6.66
    Intel 7.0.0.25
    Check here: http://www.fdrsoft.fr.fm/">http://www.fdrsoft.fr.fm/
    Intel Version 7.2.2.1006
    nForce4 Version 6.70
  • Marlin1975 - Monday, December 19, 2005 - link

    Being that DVD shrink will not be updated anymore and the creator is now part of Nero, and the Recode program. Why not use Recode?
  • PrinceGaz - Tuesday, December 20, 2005 - link

    Personally I wouldn't touch any of the compressed domain transcoders like DVD Shrink as they sacrifice quality for speed. Something like DVD Rebuilder combined with the excellent CCE SP encoder provide the best possible quality and are just as easy to use as DVD Shrink. It's nowhere near as fast as DVD Shrink, but I'll take better picture quality over saving a few minutes any day.
  • mrred - Monday, December 19, 2005 - link

    Anyone else notice that the game benches seem horribly gpu-bound? How about giving us some lower resolutions in testing?
    Look at FEAR in particular: X2-4200 and X2-3800 getting exactly the same score? HELLO?!?!?!? That's not a cpu-benchmark. Gimme a break.
  • Anemone - Tuesday, December 20, 2005 - link

    Frankly I appreciate testing that shows resolutions we actually play at. Now if only we'd see 1920x1200 :)
  • blackbrrd - Monday, December 19, 2005 - link

    The games are benchmarked at 1024x768.

    Personally I haven't played a game below 1024x768 since I got my GF2mx four or five years ago.

    Most games look horrible below 1024x768, except the games ported from consoles ;)

  • saratoga - Monday, December 19, 2005 - link

    Yeah and above 1024 you're GPU limited. Its almost like this was a CPU review.
  • tfranzese - Monday, December 19, 2005 - link

    That's not the point. The point is to relieve the GPU so regardless of what GPUs come out a year or two from now that alieviate this bottleneck we'll have known beforehand how the CPU handles things.

    Further, this is a CPU preview and as such we don't care about system performance or GPU performance; that shouldn't be the focus or included in the article. Instead, every benchmark should serve the articles purpose of comparing the CPUs - GPU bound benchmarks do NOT serve that purpose and should have their resolution lowered to serve that purpose, otherwise they should not be included because what point do they serve except fluff?
  • tayhimself - Monday, December 19, 2005 - link

    Yeah this review is horrible, just like the first Yonah review.
  • uop - Monday, December 19, 2005 - link

    I wouldn't call it horrible.
    There are some weak points, but it does give a good idea about how the Core Duo performs.
    Mainly:
    - It's not as good as the A64 when it comes to games
    - FP is much improved but not there yet

    The article does do a good job of reminding us that Yonah is just the dress rehersal for the real deal. Conroe is supposed to be faster, wider, and full of 64-bit goodness. Think about it - with Yonah's die size, it could be the Celeron-M in just 6 months!
    If Yonah can compete with the A64, then unless AMD pull a fast one they're probably heading for the underdog position.

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