Intel Core i7 Nehalem 965 XE 3.2GHz review

Page 14 - Performance:

For the first part of the gaming tests of the Intel Core i7 Nehalem we picked 3DMark Vantage, Crysis and Crysis Warhead. Although the first of the three is synthetic benchmark, it is still valuable for two reasons. First, this is the only benchmark created out of thin air specifically for DirectX 10 (most DirectX 10 games and applications are actually made with the DirectX 9 framework and merely have additional layer of DirectX 10 effects). Second, Futuremark, the company behind the whole 3DMark series of tests, at this time is developing a game that is based on the engine of Vantage, and a promising game it is expected to be.

3DMark Vantage

In the 3DMark Vantage test we recorded the CPU result and the summary result in Performance mode. GPU result in this test is almost unaffected by the processor and varies somewhere around or under 1%.

CPU tests in Vantage are extremely well optimized for multi-threading and that is clearly seen. Intel Core i7 965 XE had about 20% higher CPU result than Intel Q9550 at the same frequency of 3.2GHz. Though CPU results vary considerably from the dual core E8500 to the brand new quad core 8 thread Core i7 965 XE, the difference in frames per second is almost nonexistent.

Crysis

Every benchmarker's favorite Лgame from Crytek, heir of the brilliant Far Cry, that was released over three years ago. In most tests we used the benchmarking tool of HOCBench, with the recorded by us timedemo, in order to get the most realistic result.

As its clearly seen when playing Crysis in combination with GeForce 280GTX 1GB it matters not whether you use a dual, quad or the Core i7 Nehalem processor at 3.2GHz. The minimal FPS for all 5 configuration are identical. Sure, there is the single frame deviation in favour of the quad core processors, but in reality its hardly noticeable.

Crysis Warhead

The Crysis continuation. Crytek claim that a bit more effects are added as well as some engine optimization. Again HOCBench are to blame for the easy and systematic result gathering from the game:

Same scenario as in the first Crysis. More cores are not much of an advantage, results as see it are more less equal