Intel Core i7 Nehalem 965 XE 3.2GHz review

Page 15 - Performance:

In the second round of game testing we threw in the long awaited Far Cry 2, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars from ID Software, interesting for being an OpenGL release and World in Conflict from Massive Entertainment, that is one of the most graphically intense (resources that is) real time strategy game.

Far Cry 2

The Far Cry was made by Crytek and was later succeeded by Crysis. But Crytek sold all rights of Far Cry to Ubisoft, so the engine of Far Cry 2 had nothing to do with Crysis and was developed separately.

Despite the high levels of detail, filtration and so on, that make the graphics of the game look more than awesome, it still runs comfortably with more than 50 frames per second. And yet again we see that if you need the perfect gaming computer money will be better spend not on Core i7, but on a cheaper high end dual core processor and expensive top-notch video card.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

The game is based on the newest version of Doom 3 OpenGL engine.

No real difference between tested configurations here either.

World in Conflict

The game is very appropriate for our tests, using DirectX 10 effects, soft particles, HDR smoke, awesome explosions and lighting effects. Because of the uncomfortable ways to test the recorded timedemo in World in Conflict, we used the integrated benchmark that is well known for its CPU dependence. Let's see if that's true:

Alas, spotting the difference of using better processor is inevitable, although between Q9550 @ 3.2GHz and Core i7 965 XE it is quite subtle, while at the same time Core i7 965 XE costs three times more. And not to forget that memory in the Q9550 configuration is with 1GB less.