Date:
Monday , January 22, 2007
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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Real-World Gaming CPU Comparison with 8800 GTX SLI

AMD and Intel head-to-head. With NVIDIA's 8800 series GPU supplying a big jump in performance over the last generation of video cards, we revisit just what these CPUs do for you when you are gaming. Is one truly better? The results have changed.

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Platform and Game Configuration

For evaluation of dual-GPU video cards we are using an EVGA NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI motherboard for the Intel Core 2 Duo X6800 processor. For the AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 we are using an ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe 590 SLI motherboard. For both systems the same 2GB of Corsair XMS2 Dominator CM2X1024-8888C4D at 4-4-4-12 1T RAM was used. We are using the latest BIOS and chipset drivers for both platforms at time of testing.

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System Configuration

We are directly comparing the fastest AMD dual-core platform with the fastest Intel dual-core platform available at this time. For our Intel Core 2 Duo X6800 (2.93 GHz) CPU we are using the EVGA nForce 680i SLI motherboard with the latest P24 BIOS and NVIDIA 9.53 nForce chipset drivers. The BIOS was configured with default CPU frequencies and default memory frequencies at the fastest timings, LinkBoost was also enabled.

For the AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 (2.8 GHz) CPU we are using the ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe 590 SLI motherboard. The latest BIOS, 0706, was used as well as the latest nForce chipset drivers 9.35. The BIOS was also configured at default CPU frequencies and memory frequency with the same memory timings.

Video Card Configuration

Two BFGTech GeForce 8800 GTX video cards were installed in an SLI configuration on both platforms. You can read about the BFGTech GeForce 8800 GTX here. Both video cards were running at full x16 PCIe frequencies on both platforms. The SLI bridge was connected to the front most SLI connectors on the video card. We tested both positions with the bridge (8800 series video cards have two SLI connectors per video card) and found no performance difference between either set of connectors.

We connected our display to DVI port number one on the “primary” video card. We are using driver version 97.92 which is the latest official driver at the time of evaluation.

Display Setup

Being the fastest platform and video card setup you can currently get for gaming there is no point in testing anything below the best display you can get for gaming as well. Therefore we tested all of the following games on the Dell 3007WFP 30” LCD. You can read what we had to say about this LCD here.

Suffice it to say, gaming on a large widescreen LCD is something you have to experience for yourself. The native resolution of this LCD is 2560x1600 and that is quite a resolution to push in the latest games for video cards, it needs a lot of horsepower behind it. For comparison a typical 19” CRT display can run a game at a resolution of 1600x1200, that’s 1,920,000 pixels of information. Move up to the Dell 2007WFP 24” LCD at a native resolution of 1920x1200 and you’ve got 2,304,000 pixels. Now move way up to the 30” LCD at 2560x1600 and now you have 4,096,000, that’s almost twice as much as the 24” LCD. This is where the GeForce 8800 GTX in SLI is going to shine.

Game Configuration

For our real-world gaming evaluation today we will be using seven games which stress our system in different ways. This should paint a broader picture and help you make an informed buying decision. There are some games that lean toward being more CPU dependent in certain situations, and other games that lean toward being more graphics intensive.

Oblivion

We will start with Oblivion. Oblivion is more of a graphics dependent game, this is especially true when you maximize the grass setting and enable HDR in the game. However, there is a CPU component to the game and that comes into play with the AI (Artificial Intelligence) and trees, yes trees. Oblivion utilizes SpeedTree for rendering trees in the game and as such Oblivion can issue a thread with dual-core CPUs to handle tree generation as you move through the game. Therefore with the tree setting on the highest this game does use a fair amount of CPU power running through forests and when engaged with the AI. Therefore this game should give us a good balance of graphics dependency and CPU dependency.

Flight Sim X

Next we will move on to Flight Simulator X from Microsoft. Flight Simulator X is by far one of the most CPU dependent games we have ever encountered. This was true for past versions of Flight Simulator as well. Though this new version supports Pixel Shader 2.0 water and other newer DirectX 9 effects the game inherently relies heavily on your CPU. The performance of your CPU will determine how high you can set in-game settings such as “Traffic” and “Scenery” in the game. Other settings like “Aircraft” and “Weather” are more GPU dependent. However “Scenery” actually does mix in the GPU when you crank it up since it enables the Pixel Shader 2.0 water at the higher settings. This game should provide us with some excellent system comparisons.

Medieval II: Total War

We will then move on with Medieval II: Total War. This new game has a fair bit of “GPU’ness” to it; it supports Shader Model 2.0 and bloom, shadow and other effects. However, this game can become incredibly CPU dependent depending on how many units you have in combat. This game supports massive troops and combat ranging in the hundreds if not thousands of characters onscreen at one time. With that many characters battling all at once you can imagine the amount of CPU horsepower needed to animate all those characters and keep up with their game state. This game is really going to tell us how these CPUs compare with 8800 GTX SLI since we are going to run a huge battle with hundreds of characters.

Battlefield 2142

Battlefield 2142 will be our next game. This game typically is more GPU dependent than CPU. We will be playing both singleplayer and multiplayer to gauge performance under both conditions; certainly this game is being utilized for its multiplayer aspect among gamers primarily. This game should give us an excellent balance of GPU and CPU performance.

F.E.A.R. Extraction Point

Our next game will be F.E.A.R. Extraction Point. This game is also a mixture of CPU and GPU dependencies depending on the situation. F.E.A.R. simply has some of the best computer AI out there, and as you may have guessed AI is driven by the CPU. However, F.E.A.R. also has some of the best visuals out there for a first person shooter and thus pushes the GPU when you crank up the resolution. This will give us a great balance of CPU and GPU performance.

Need for Speed: Carbon

We will continue with Need for Speed: Carbon. NFS Carbon is more of a GPU dependent game, supporting the latest DX9 features such as motion blur. There is a CPU component, the computer AI controlling the competition’s cars, but for the most part this game is very heavily GPU dependent. This will tell us in a GPU depending game how these systems compare.

World of Warcraft

Finally we will end with World of Warcraft. Though this game is not new, it is incredibly popular with a lot of people, thus it represents a large amount of the gaming community. The graphics are not very GPU dependent for the most part. There are some situations however which can be, such as many players casting many spells at the same time in huge online battles. For the most part though the CPU drives this game, so it will be a good test for system performance.

Evaluation Setup

Please be aware we test our video cards a bit differently from what is the norm. We concentrate on examining the real-world gameplay that each video card provides. The Highest Playable section shows the best Image Quality delivered at a playable frame rate.

In our graphs we use some abbreviations to indicate the method of AA or AF being used.

TR MSAA = Transparency Multisampling Antialiasing – Indicates the use of NVIDIA’s Transparency Multisampling quality setting on GeForce 7 and 8 series video cards.

TR SSAA = Transparency Supersampling Antialiasing – Indicates the use of NVIDIA’s Transparency Supersampling quality setting on GeForce 7 and 8 series video cards.