Intel Skulltrail Unleashed: Core 2 Extreme QX9775 x 2

Name: Intel Skulltrail Unleashed: Core 2 Extreme QX9775 x 2 - Page 11
Brand: Intel

by Marco Chiappetta — Saturday, February 16, 2008, 12:01 PM EDT

For our last set of game tests, we moved on to some in-game benchmarking with Crysis and F.E.A.R. When testing processors with Crysis or F.E.A.R, 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.

Benchmarks with Crysis and F.E.A.R. v1.08

DirectX 9 and 10 Gaming Performance

Crysis and F.E.A.R. tell two very different stories. In the Crysis CPU benchmark, the Skulltrail rig performs quite well, but it can't keep pace with the QX9650 or QX9770. The QX9650 and QX9700 based systems were equipped with much faster DDR3 memory, which offers far more memory bandwidth, and as such the systems are able to outpace Skulltrail.

F.E.A.R., however, was completely CPU bound, and the additional resources afforded by Skulltrails dual-processors and eight cores allowed it to finish the test well ahead of the competition.

Tags: Intel, Core 2, Core, rail, Xtreme, extreme, skulltrail, XT, EA, eme, QX, AI, K

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com