Intel Core i7-2600K and i5-2500K Processors Debut
Low-Res Gaming: Crysis and ETQW
For our next set of tests, we moved on to some in-game benchmarking with Crysis and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. When testing processors with Crysis or ET:QW, we drop the resolution to 800x600, and reduce all of the in-game graphical options to their minimum values to isolate CPU and memory performance as much as possible. However, the in-game effects, which control the level of detail for the games' physics engines and particle systems, are left at their maximum values, since these actually do place some load on the CPU rather than GPU.
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The Crysis CPU benchmark had the Core i7-975 (quad-core) and 980X (6-core) processors outpacing the new Core i5-2500K and Core i7-2600K processors, but nothing from the AMD camp came close. ET:QW tests a different story, with the new Core i7-2600K taking the pole position, followed closely behind by the 980X.
Obviously, these are two instances where using the new Sandy Bridge-based Core i5 and i7's integrated graphics has a significant impact on performance, but note that both games ran with playable framerates at these low-quality settings.