Intel Core i5-3427U: Ivy Bridge For Ultrabooks
DX11 Gaming: Batman Arkham City
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Batman: Arkham City is a sequel to 2009’s Game of the Year winning Batman: Arkham Asylum. This recently released sequel, however, lives up to and even surpasses the original. The story takes place 18 months after the original game. Quincy Sharp, the onetime administrator of Arkham Asylum, has become mayor and convinced Gotham to create "Arkham City" by walling off the worst, most crime-ridden areas of the city and turning the area into a giant open-air prison. The game has DirectX 9 and 11 rendering paths, with support for tessellation, multi-view soft shadows, and ambient occlusion. We tested in DX11 mode with all in-game graphical options set to their maximum values, at various resolutions.
Batman: Arkham City is sort of the poster child for a leading-edge game engine that not only looks great but employs some higher-end effects and rendering techniques. In DX11 mode, the new ultra low voltage Core i5-3427U doesn't catch playable frame rates but if you drop the game back to the DX9 rendering path, at a lower resolution of 1024X768 things smooth out. Surprisingly, in this game engine, Intel's HD 4000 graphics engine is stronger than AMD's Radeon HD 7600 series core in the A10 Trinity APU, though we suspect driver maturity is at play more than anything else.
Regardless, to even consider running a title like this on a wafer-thin Ultrabook is something that reaches beyond the intended usage model for this type of machine. Admittedly, expecting to game on a notebook that weighs in under 3lbs is unrealistic, though we had to look at the numbers just for grins.
Regardless, to even consider running a title like this on a wafer-thin Ultrabook is something that reaches beyond the intended usage model for this type of machine. Admittedly, expecting to game on a notebook that weighs in under 3lbs is unrealistic, though we had to look at the numbers just for grins.
