

At 1680x1050, Left 4 Dead is entirely CPU-bound. Adding CrossFire or SLI only results in lower frame rates. We do get a great sense for how clock speed affects this game, though—at least between the three Core i5/i7 CPUs. The trio is favored, to be sure. And although the Core i5-750 features a more aggressive Turbo Boost implementation than the Core i7-920, it isn’t able to usurp the X58-based platform. Interesting also is that the ATI and Nvidia cards score identically. The bottleneck couldn’t get any more pronounced.
The competition opens up a little bit at 2560x1600. With a single Radeon HD 4870 X2 installed, AMD’s Phenom II X4 965 actually takes a first place finish, followed by the three Nehalem-based chips. With a GeForce GTX 285, all five platforms perform almost the same, notably slower than ATI’s flagship.
Drop in a second GeForce GTX 285, though, and Nvidia overtakes ATI, if only by a sliver. The Core i7-870, with its 2.93 GHz base clock, proves to be the fastest. Of course, even the lowest result in this chart is ridiculously quick. There’s no reason leave anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering disabled in Left 4 Dead.


There’s a slight benefit to adding CrossFire or SLI at 1680x1050 with more visual detail applied, but certainly not enough to warrant buying a second graphics card. Again, the Core i7-870 takes a first place finish in this one.
At 2560x1600, with 4xAA and 8xAF enabled, all five platforms turn back the same results with a single Radeon HD 4870 X2 installed. The same happens when you sub-in a GeForce GTX 285, though the Nvidia card is quite a bit slower. Nvidia takes off with the addition of SLI though, sailing past a pair of Radeon HD 4870 X2s. ATI’s cards pick up performance too, but they don’t scale nearly as well.
Even though the cards on our P55-based platforms only get eight lanes of PCI Express connectivity each, the Core i5 and Core i7 systems still manage to out-perform the Core 2 Quad and Phenom II machines under the influences of CrossFire.
- Introduction
- Bringing Out The Big Guns
- Test Hardware And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky
- Benchmark Results: Resident Evil 5
- Benchmark Results: Far Cry 2
- Benchmark Results: Left 4 Dead
- Benchmark Results: Grand Theft Auto 4
- Benchmark Results: Crysis
- Benchmark Results: Flight Simulator X
- Conclusion
PS: If you want a 3rd and 4th player, you should go discuss x86 licensing with your beloved Intel...
I'd rather have seen 4890 and then 4890CF. That way you see single card performance compared to crossfire instead of dual corssfire compared to quad crossfire.
I do understand why the card is compared to the GTX 285 based on price though.
But excellent review, overall, I'm actually surprised at how the 965BE did, I thought it'd be behind, where it was actually right in the pack.
Great review.
I like vista, rock solid and stable since I got it years ago. Don't listen to the bashers who never have tried the product.
I get a good performance boost from my second gtx280 with my q9650 @ 4 gz
As mentioned in the story, these were tested on 790GX and X48 platforms, which don't do SLI. While there are Nvidia-based SLI platforms available for both configurations, I felt that they were quite a bit more rare and applicable to a much smaller contingent of readers than the CrossFire-capable platforms. The beauty of X58 and P55 is that they'll do both!
Regards,
Chris
I'd rather have seen 4890 and then 4890CF. That way you see single card performance compared to crossfire instead of dual corssfire compared to quad crossfire.
I do understand why the card is compared to the GTX 285 based on price though.
I wish there is a third and fourth player in the market so AMD won't sit on its butt and do nothing. AMD has this idea that “we don’t have to compete on performance, just make our product cheap enough and people will buy it”. That’s what doomed GM and Chrysler.
I wish Nvidia and NEC join/rejoin the CPU market.
I thought people should have learned by now that GPU~intensive tests say little about CPUs, except whether they're 'Good Enough', or not.
PS: If you want a 3rd and 4th player, you should go discuss x86 licensing with your beloved Intel...
Then, I can see x8 PCIe2.0 links hurting the P55 chipset and the X58 showing its true potential.
This will definitely affect SLI/Crossfire setups but I am not sure how it will affect single card solutions.
Agreed. Vista was pretty good after all the manufactures released the drivers. I still think Win 7 is better than XP and Vista.