Testing Configuration

Originally, I only planned to run the quad core with the new configuration.  But after having difficulty reaching higher clocks speeds, I wasn’t sure if the performance would be better with the dual core, or the quad core.  So I decided to run both configurations through testing and figure out which performed better.

With the high quality cooling, I also figured I’d be able to extract a bit more speed out of the i5 670….and I was right.  I was successful in getting the dual core chip stable at 4.8GHz, and due to the faster memory, I was able to get it running much faster as well at DDR3-2000.

So this is what the final test configuration looks like:

• Silverstone SUGO SG05 case
• Silverstone ST45SF 450W SFX PSU
• Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3
• Intel Core i5 750 at 4.2GHz
  • Corsair Dominator GTX3 at DDR3-2100 6-9-6-27 1T
• Intel Core i5 670 at 4.8GHz
  • Corsair Dominator GTX3 at DDR3-2000 7-9-7-24 1T
• Corsair H70 CPU water cooling system
• 80GB Intel X25M SSD (Windows 7 Home Premium x64)
• 500GB Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive (games and media files)
• eVGA 480 GTX graphics card at 800MHz core 2000MHz memory

Again, I’ve monitored the power draw throughout the testing and I can confirm that this 450W PSU is strong enough for gaming and daily activities, but not enough for stress testing.  If you’re really a big fan of stress testing, you’ll probably want to opt for a less power hungry video card.

Results – dual core at 4.8GHz VS quad core at 4.2GHz

3DMark results
Again, I’ll start with some basic synthetic tests to set the baseline.  Again, these were all done with the fully loaded Windows 7 gaming box.  The nVidia control panel does allow you to assign different performance profiles per application, so I did set performance settings for these tests, but left maximum quality driver settings enabled for all of the game tests.

3DMark benchmarking results

I think the results here are fairly inline with my expectations.  3DMark03 and 05 giving a slight advantage to the Clarkdale clock speed.  Where 3DMark06 and Vantage both get a nice boost from four real cores.  This rig was not built for benchmarking, however, it was built for gaming.  Despite that I was able to pull out some very respectable scores thanks to some very powerful and impressive components.

Real world gaming results

This system was put together as a focused gaming machine.  And that’s probably what you really came here to see.  Well, it’s here….and even more than you bargained for.  In addition to the eleven tests I ran in the first article, I’ve added STALKER Call of Pripyat and Mafia II to the list.  Here are the results, starting with a comparison of average frames per second.

Game tests – average frames per second

Some pretty straightforward data here.  Most games favor the GTX 480 graphics card, Call of Juarez being the only title favoring AMD by any sizable margin, however, nVidia takes a big win in DiRT2.  It’s also very interesting to see that despite the Clarkdale’s huge clock speed advantage, it never outpaces the quad core CPU by any meaningful amount.

Next up….comparing minimum frame rates.

Game tests – minimum frames per second

Mixing up dual core and quad core CPUs in a gaming system with real world testing reveals some pretty interesting stuff.  AMD was very competitive in Crysis when comparing average frame rates, however, nVidia gives a beat down with minimum frame rates.  Crysis was really hyped for being coded to use quad cores and obviously it doesn’t live up to the hype. Of course that isn’t news, but seeing it again just continues to confirm enthusiast’s disappointment.  Again, nVidia is VERY strong with the DiRT2 test and is also very impressive in Batman.

Concerning CPU scaling, we didn’t see much interesting in the average FPS slide concerning quad core use, and things don’t change drastically here with two exceptions.  GTA IV shows incredible scaling with four real cores.  If you check out the screen shots at the bottom, you’ll notice that it appears the games makes very good use of all four threads with either CPU, but it obviously works much better with four real ones.  From a subjective point of view, the game is a night and day difference with the quad core vs the dual core, and I don’t think I’ll ever play it with a dual core again.  The other exception is Mafia II which doesn’t show much difference with average FPS, however, minimum frame rates get much better with the quad core.  Call of Juarez bucks the trend and actually looks to play much smoother with the dual core.

Continue to page 7 for Power Consumption and Conclusion… >>

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