Okay, time to take a break with AMD's processors for now and let's go back to Intel with the Core i7 920. Yes the i7 920, the one that a lot of us bought or wanted to buy, the one that has almost revolutionized the market, in bief: the one! Back to the article we are going to test his gaming performance coupled with an AMD HD 7970 under recent 3D games with maximum graphics settings possible at a resolution of 1920x1080. And there is a bonus, lots of people asked us to test it at both stock and 4 GHz speed, so we did!
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Introduction
Find all the benchmarks/games results on the following pages.
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Test Setup
Hardware
| Mainboard |
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| CPU |
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| Memory |
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| Graphic Cards(Driver) |
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Drivers |
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| OS |
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| HDD |
|
| PSU |
|
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Benchmarks and Games Settings
Futuremark
- 3DMark 11
(1.0.3)
- GPU Test - Performance Preset
- 3DMark Vantage (1.1.0)
- GPU Test - Performance Preset
Unigine Heaven DX11 Benchmark
| Version | 3.0 |
| API | DirectX 11 |
| Tessellation | Extreme |
| Shaders | High |
| Anisotropy | 16x |
| Stereo 3D | Disabled |
| Anti-aliasing | 8x |
| Full Screen | Yes |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
Geeks3D TessMark
| Version | 0.3.0 |
| Map Set | Set 4 (2048 x 2048) |
| Tesselation | Insane (x64) |
| Full Screen | Yes |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Anti-aliasing | 8x |
| Tessellation | High |
| Duration | 60000 (ms) |
Geeks3D FurMark (Burn-in test)
| Version | 1.10.0 |
| Full Screen | Yes |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Anti-aliasing | 8x MSAA |
Alien vs Predator DX11 Benchmark
| Texture Quality | Very High |
| Shadow Quality | High |
| Hardware Tesselation | Yes |
| Advance Shadow Sampling | Yes |
| Full Srceen Anti-Aliasing Samples | 4x |
| Anisotropic Filtering | 16x |
| SSAO | On |
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
Batman: Arkham City Integrated Benchmark
| FullScreen | Yes |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| V Sync | No |
| Anti-Aliasing | 8x MSAA |
| Stereoscopic 3D Status | No |
| DirectX 11 Features | MVSS And HBAO |
| DirectX 11 Tesselation | High |
| Detail Level | Extreme |
| Dynamic Shadow | Yes |
| Motion Blur | Yes |
| Distortion | Yes |
| Lens Flares | Yes |
| Light Shafts | Yes |
| Reflections | Yes |
| Ambient Occlusion | Yes |
| Hardware Accelerated PhysX | Off |
Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3 (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| FullScreen | On |
| Vertical Sync | Off |
| Field of view | 70 |
| Motion Blur Amount | Max |
| Graphics Quality | Ultra |
BattleField 3 (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Aspect Ratio | Wide 16:9 |
| Anti-Aliasing | 4x |
| Screen Refresh Rate | 60 Hz |
| Sync Every Frame | No |
| Shadows | Yes |
| Specular Map | Yes |
| Depth Of Field | Yes |
| Screen Space Ambient Occlusion | High Quality |
| Soften Smoke Edges | Yes |
| Bullet Impacts | Yes |
| Image Quality | Ultra |
Crysis 2 DX11 + HiRes Texture Pack Benchmark
| Quality | Ultra |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Anti-Aliasing | 4x |
| Map | Central Park/Adrenaline |
| Runs | 1 |
| API | DirectX 11 |
| Edge AA | Edge AA |
| Hi-Res Textures | On |
DIRT 2 Integrated Benchmark
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Refresh Rate | 60 |
| MultiSampling | 8x MSAA |
| VSync | Off |
| Aspect Ration | 16:9 |
| Details | Ultra Preset |
Dragon Age II (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Full Screen Mode | Yes |
| Renderer | DirectX 11 |
| Vertical Sync | no |
| Graphics Detail | Very High |
| Anti-Aliasing | 8x |
| Anisotropic Filtering | 16x |
| Screen Space Ambient Occlusion | Yes |
| Diffusion Depth of Field | Yes |
| High Quality Blur | Yes |
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Aspect Ratio | Wide 16:9 |
| Anti-Aliasing | 8x |
| Anisotropic-Filtering | 16x |
| Details | Ultra |
| Vertical Sync | Disabled |
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat Benchmark
| Preset | Ultra |
| Renderer | Enhan. full dyn. lighting (DX11) |
| Video Mode | 1920 x 1080 |
| MSAA | 4x |
| MSAA for A-tested objects | DX10.0 Style [Standard] |
| SSAO Mode | HDAO |
| SSAO Quality | High |
| Use DX10.1 | No |
| Enable Tesselation | Yes |
| Contact Hardening Shadows | Yes |
StarCraft II (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Display Mode | Fullscreen |
| Refresh Rate | Default |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Vertical Sync | No |
| Texture Quality | Ultra |
| Graphics Quality | Ultra |
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3DMark 11
3DMark Vantage
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Unigine Heaven
TessMark
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Alien vs Predator
Batman: Arkham City
DIRT 2
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Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
BattleField 3
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Crysis 2
Dragon Age 2
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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
StarCraft 2
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Power Consumption
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Benchmark Summary
Synthetic Benchmarks
Games
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Performance Index
Performance/Price
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Conclusion
Let's take a look at
those results. One can see that under games on average the Intel Core i7 3770K
is only 20 % faster than your four years old Core i7 920. The difference in
performance goes from 5 % up to 67 % which is quite much. More detailed we have
the Core i7 3770K taking the lead by 5 % under BattleField 3, Alien vs Predator
and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The difference gets a bit higher under Dragon Age II with 10
%, for DIRT 2 and Crysis 2 it was about 13 % and we had a gap of 22 % under
Batman and Call of Duty MW3. The big numbers have been seen under Skyrim and
StarCraft II with 45 and 67 % advantage on the ivy bridge processor over the
Bloomfield.
The 50% overclocking we did on the i7 920 allows him to be more competitive but
it turned out that under heavy graphics load it didn't help that much. I mean a
50 % overclocking that brings only 7 % more performance isn't really kickass.
Anyway at this point against the Core i7 920 overclocked at 4.0 GHz the i7 3770K
is only 12 % faster on average. Regarding other recent processors like the
FX-8150/FX-4170, the Core i7 920 at stock frequency was as good as AMD's recent
offer. At 4 GHz it was 9 % faster.
Conclusion: Still using a Core i7 9xx based setup? Don't upgrade, keep it, your built was and is still worth the money. We mean that spending money now for an Ivy Bridge processor or a Sandy Bridge implies a full upgrade of your configuration including motherboard, probably the cooler and the memory as well for just a 20 % improvement in performance if your processor is not overclocked. At this point upgarding the graphics card is a much better way to improve the performance ingame.
Anyway stay tuned as I said in our previous articles,
more CPUs will follow:
AMD Phenom II x2
AMD Phenom I x4
AMD Brazos ?
Intel Core i5 2500K
Intel Core i3 Ivy Bridge
Intel Atom ?
Hey guys, which fight do you want to
see next time? Feel free to leave a comment!
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Author: Christian Ney