Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P - P45 at its Finest
by Gary Key on February 3, 2009 12:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Gaming Results
We debated on which direction to go with the gaming test results. Do we show 1024x768 at low quality settings to provide a more detailed look at differences between the boards or go with a popular resolution and settings that most gamers would utilize with our choice of video cards knowing that the GPU will start to become the handicap? We decided on a 1680x1050 resolution with 2xAA enabled and 8xAF where applicable. Our in-game settings were set to high quality.
As such, all of the P45 boards offer roughly the same performance. There are no real surprises here as each board finished within a percent of each in our final scores, although the GIGABYTE board was extremely consistent during benchmarking.
CrossFire Results
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poohbear - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
thanks for benching @ 1680x1050 so we know real world usage. hate it when they bench @ a real low rez even if there's a difference as that means nothing to 99% of ppl that game @ anything but the lower resolutions.:)crimson117 - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
When they bench at low resolutions, it's to discover any CPU bottleneck. It's the equivalent of saying, "we know the GPU can handle this low res at super high framerates, so will the CPU processing the game mechanics keep the framerates down?".For example, an RTS like Supreme Commander will have okay graphics, but most of the horsepower will be the CPU calculating troop movement, damage, etc, especially on large maps with lots of players. So they'll want to take the GPU's rendering speed out of the equation and see how fast the CPU can do its gameplay calculations.
This can really help people know which part of their computer to upgrade. A friend of mine has an E6300 Conroe 1.86GHz (one of the earliest C2D's), so his CPU is pretty old. He has a 9800GT graphics card. If he wants to play Supreme Commander with 10 opponents at once, should he upgrade his graphics or his CPU?
At low resolutions, the video card can handle it no problem, but no matter what resolution, the CPU still has to calculate 10 players actions at once. If they only benchmarked at high resolution, then the graphics lag would mask the fact that the CPU calculations were also laggy. So by reducing the resolution to really low levels, he'd find out the CPU still can't keep up and should be upgraded.
zebrax2 - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
seems like those polls are starting to take effect