Core i7 SLI gaming performance

Category : 2012

Published by Jean-Luc Hadey on 12.11.08

Already one week ago we published our first article about Intels latest CPU architecture Nehalem. There we were testing under optimized conditions to show you the potential of the architecture in future. In this article we will show you how Intels Core i7 performs in recent games.

Therefore we test the Core i7 compared to a Core 2 Q9650 quad core processor.

We can tell you already at this point of the article that the performance increase is going to be much less significant than in the other article and this is for one simple reason: most of todays software isn't optimized to cope with eight threads and therefore a lot of potential Nehalem provides us with isn't going to be used.




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Testsystem

Hardware
Mainboard	Asus P6T Deluxe Intel X58 EVGA 790i FTW
CPU	Intel QuadCore Q9650, 3.0GHz Intel I7-965 Extr. Edition, 3.2GHz
	Corsair XMS3 Dominator 1800@ 1333 MHz 7-7-7-20 (2 x 1GB) Qimondo DDR3 1066 MHz 7-7-7-20 (3 x 1GB)
	2 x Zotac Nvidia GTX260² 896 MB GDDR3
	Western Digital 160GB RE16
	Corsair 1000 Watt

Software
	Windows VISTA Home Premium 64Bit SP1
	Nvidia ForceWare 180.42 nicht WHQL
Benchmarks	3DMarkVantage
	3DMark06 v1.1.0
	F.E.A.R.
	Prey
	World in Conflict
	Call of Juarez
	Crysis

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Synthetic benchmarks

3DMark 06	Core i7-965 3.2GHz	Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz
1280 x 1024, no AA, no AF	18773	16219
1600 x 1200, 4 x AA, 16 x AF	16772	15079
2048 x 1536, 4 x AA, 16 x AF	14134	13667

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage, Performance Preset, no AA, no AF	Core i7-965 3.2GHz	Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz
Gesamt Score	16620	14399
CPU Score	19761	12219
GPU Score	15784	15310

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DX9-Benchmarks

PREY	Core i7-965 3.2GHz	Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz
1280 x 1024, no AA, no AF	331	282
1600 x 1200, 4 x AA, 16 x AF	269	251
2048 x 1536, 4 x AA, 16 x AF	192	177

F.E.A.R	Core i7-965 3.2GHz	Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz
1280 x 1024, 4 x AA, 16 x AF	269	249
1600 x 1200, 4 x AA, 16 x AF	221	205
2048 x 1536, 4 x AA, 16 x AF	158	147

DX10-Benchmarks

World in Conflict	Core i7-965 3.2GHz	Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz
1280 x 1024, no AA, no AF	87	68
1600 x 1200, 4 x AA, 16 x AF	75	64
2048 x 1536, 4 x AA, 16 x AF	56	53

Call of Juarez	Core i7-965 3.2GHz	Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz
1280 x 1024, 4 x AA, 16 x AF	59.1	61.3
1600 x 1200, 4 x AA, 16 x AF	47.6	49.7
1920 x 1200, 4 x AA, 16 x AF	41.4	43.2

Crysis	Core i7-965 3.2GHz	Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz
1280 x 1024, no AA, no AF	61.5	55.1
1600 x 1200, 4 x AA, 16 x AF	42.2	39.1
2048 x 1536, 4 x AA, 16 x AF	24.9	22.8

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Conclusion

Except one game Intels Core i7 - 965 3.2 GHz was able to convince us in every single benchmark or game. Through the whole span the performance was higher.

But as we expected Nehalem couldn't show it's real potential and therefore we all need to stay patient for some time until the majority of the game- and software insdustry puts software on the market that can take advantage of eight or more threads.

With the synthetic benchmark 3DMarkVantage you can see what Nehalem is able to because in this case Futuremark spreads the load to every single of Nehalems eight threads. This explains the huge performance gap between Core i7 - 965 and Core 2 Q9650.

PC-enthusiasts which are always looking for the best performing components money can buy can't do anything wrong with purchasing a Nehalem based CPU. Further it will be available next week 17. of November.

But if you are the sort of person who likes - here and now - the most performance per money you are better off with a Core 2 CPU that comes with more then 3 GHz of clock.

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Authors: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch und jl.hadey@ocaholic.ch