Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955

High Detail Gaming:

Summary:

Our Doom 3 test shows what happens when the resolution is increased to place the limitations on the video card - there are very little performance differences between the eight processors we've tested here. In fact, we'd go so far as to say that there are no performance differences in Doom 3 at 1600x1200 0xAA 8xAF on a GeForce 6800 GT.

Our second test, using Far Cry, shows what happens when Anti-Aliasing is applied to the game to increase the visual quality. Again, this is somewhat limited by the video card, but it also shows some interesting numbers. There is a single frame per second difference between the cheap as chips Pentium D 820 and the Athlon 64 FX-57 with the Pentium Extreme Edition 955 slotting in somewhere in the middle.

The final test shows that games at high resolution can still be CPU limited; Unreal Tournament 2004 is one such game. There is a 33% performance difference between the Pentium D 820 and the Athlon 64 FX-57 in favour of the latter, while the Pentium Extreme Edition 955 is roughly 25% slower than the Athlon 64 FX-57. The Athlon 64 X2 4800+ is over 17% faster than the Extreme Edition 955. Interestingly, the i975X chipset performed slower in UT2004 - this is despite it performing ever so slightly faster than the i955X-based Gigabyte board in the low detail UT2004 test.