Intel Core 2 Duo Performance Update
Quake 4: SMP and No SMP
For our next few tests, we benchmarked all of the systems at the Intel event with Quake 4, patched to v1.2. This patch is SMP capable, so we cranked the resolution down to 640 x 480, and configured the game to run at its "Low-Quality" graphics settings with and without SMP support. Although Quake 4 typically taxes today's high-end GPUs, when it's configured at these minimal settings it is more CPU and memory-bound than anything else.
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For the gaming tests on this, and a couple of the processing pages, we've included results from a system equipped with a Core 2 Extreme X6800 clocked at 2.93GHz. Unfortunately, Intel did not allow us to run anything but the game tests on the Extreme Edition, which is why it is only reference on a couple of pages...
Once again, the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme handily outpaced the overclocked FX-60 here, regardless of whether or not SMP support was enabled. We doubt any of you play Quake 4 at these settings though, so we also ran similar tests with the game's resolution cranked up to 1280x1024 with 4X anti-aliasing and 8X anisotropic filtering enabled.
It seems that turning up the resolution to 1280x1024 and enabling AA and Aniso had a minimal impact on performance. Unfortunately, all of the test systems were equipped with 19" LCD panels and we were unable to test at higher resolutions.
