Intel's Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo: The Empire Strikes Back
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 14, 2006 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Gaming Performance using F.E.A.R. & Rise of Legends
Our F.E.A.R. test should be fairly familiar by now, as it is the built in performance test included with the game. Computer settings were left at "Maximum" while the graphics settings were set to "High" with the resolution cranked up to 1600 x 1200. F.E.A.R. ends up still being more GPU than CPU bound at these settings, even with a pair of X1900 XTs at its disposal, but we do see some separation among the processors:
The top three spots still go to the top three Core 2 CPUs, with the E6300 falling around the level of the X2 4600+. A trend that we've been seeing all throughout this review is that the performance of these CPUs effectively falls into three groups: Core 2 processors at the top, Athlon 64 X2s in the middle and Pentium D at the very bottom of the charts. In a sense that's the easiest way to classify these three groups of processors: if you want the fastest it's Core 2, mid-range goes to the Athlon 64 X2 and if you don't like good performance there's always the Pentium D.
Rise of Legends is a newcomer to our game benchmark suite and what an excellent addition it is. This Real Time Strategy game looks very good and plays well too; it serves as good filler until the next Command & Conquer title eventually arrives for those looking for a RTS fix. We ran with the resolution set to 1600 x 1200 and the graphics settings set to the medium defaults. We recorded a custom playback of a 3 vs. 2 multiplayer battle and played it back at 4x speed, recording the average frame rate for 10 minutes of the battle. The 10 minutes we focused on contained a good mix of light skirmishes between opponents, base/resource management with very few characters on the screen and of course some very large scale battles.
As with most RTSes, Rise of Legends is extremely CPU bound. The performance variability between runs was fairly high in this test, mainly because of how disk intensive the playback can get. Differences in performance of up to 5% should be ignored, but the standings are correct - the Core 2 line of processors absolutely demolish the competition: you're looking at true next-generation CPU performance here. The E6300 isn't nearly as impressive when compared to its more expensive siblings, but when you compare it to AMD's lineup it looks very good, especially considering its proposed cost.
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bob661 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
But they're not available today. Why is that?So Intel is launching this twice? What is going on today? Technology preview?
Questar - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Sold out?
RTFA. The NDA lifted today. Launch is on the 27th.
bob661 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
If they were sold out they would still show on Newegg and ZZF.I RFTA! That's how I was able to correlate the lack of product to the availability of benchmarks. Products leak all of the time and NDA's are held in place. This maybe a creative way of paper launching but it's still a paper launch.
Questar - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Yeah, because that's the only two places you buy a CPU from.
Sheesh.
Questar - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
bob and MrKaz, forever the fanboy.Please explain to me why Intel having the better cpu upsets you so?
MrKaz - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
And you?It can be better than Cyrix, IBM, Sun, ... I don’t care.
But you seem to care more than me.
If you don’t, why do you complain?
This is not for me because my maximum 100€ for processor.
It’s cheap (compared to others Intel past released brand new CPU) but not cheap enough.
bob661 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
I'm not a fanboi. I just hate hypocrites. If you read another post of mine in this section (use the scroll button Luke) you will see me praise the performance of the Conroe. I plan on buying one for my wife. I'll probably get a K8L if it turns out to be even or faster than Conroe otherwise I'll get a Conroe for myself.bob661 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Here's the post I made. Sound like a fanboi to you?forPPP - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Why buying more expensive and slower Core 2 Extreme (X6800, 2.93 GHz) ? There is cheaper Woodcrest at 3.0 GHz !Are there no motherboard with unbuffered memory support for Woodcrest ?
coldpower27 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Nope Intel doesn't allow their Server processor to be used for desktop stuff as it's LGA771 socket.