CPU Benchmarks: Clock Speeds And Multiple Cores

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2:00 AM - 06/08/2009 by Don Woligroski

The previous performance benchmarks have shown the earmarks of a high graphics-system dependency mixed with a low CPU dependency with extremely high frame rates at low resolutions. Let's see just how powerful the CPU needs to be to handle Dead Space by comparing stock Core i7-920 performance to Core 2 Quad Q6600 performance as the clock speed is lowered:

Even at 1.6 GHz, we're not seeing an appreciable impact on performance. Clearly, Dead Space is very easy on the CPU. Now, let's see if disabling CPU cores has an appreciable effect on performance:

Even with only two CPU cores running at a mere 1.6 GHz, Dead Space easily musters an average FPS of over 70 FPS–and that's at 2560x1600 with High Details enabled. Only when the CPU is reduced to using a single core at 1.6 GHz is there a noticeable impact on performance.

This is great news for folks with older CPUs who want to play Dead Space.

Talkback
anamaniac 06/08/2009 8:52 AM
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"Mushkin PC3-10700
3x 2,048 MB, DDR3-1066, CL 8-8-8-19
at 1.8 V"

This is a mistake, right?

anamaniac 06/08/2009 9:07 AM
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Interesting article.

Deadspace does seem like a decent game, but it was too much for me.
Tried sitting down to play it a few times, but I just couldn't take it.

And yeah, the game can play on some junk hardware.
800x600 res, minimum settings.


First time I saw one of those creatures, I just wasted ammo. WTF WAS THAT!?!?!
Pentium D 2.8GHz, 1GB DDR2 533, Nvidia 7500LE 256MB.
It played. Average framerate was bad, but the minimums were kinda bad, yet still possible.

Nice to see what I may be able to crank it up to now with my 4670, though a couple gigs of ddr2 800 will be a nice bonus if I find the will to spend my rent money...

Andraxxus 06/08/2009 10:09 AM
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It can play fairly well even on a E6300@1.86Ghz with 1GB DDR2 667 and Nvidia 7600GT but I never finished it.

tacoslave 06/08/2009 10:20 AM
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im ashamed to say this but i jumped when one of those things came at me out of nowhere...

axilon 06/08/2009 10:27 AM
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One of the few games that sucked me in. I do NOT recommend playing it at 3am, the dreams I had....

microdots 06/08/2009 11:01 AM
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9600gt plays this game great
awesome game regardless tho. everything is very well done, its easy to tell that the developers took great time in perfecting every portion in the levels and environment. as from what i remember it defiantly lived up to its hype. i still haven't beaten it either along with being super cool its also pretty difficult but totally worth the money; a true gaming experience.

Ciuy 06/08/2009 11:51 AM
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so in the end AO = bad. Unless u got to much fps .

Kill@dor 06/08/2009 2:55 PM
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I don't blame you for being scared to try this game out...its really something else ^_^ Very well made game in my opinion

rags_20 06/08/2009 3:27 PM
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I was thinking of trying it. Is it really that scary? I mean, if you turn down the volume, it shouldn't be as scary.

Roffey123 06/08/2009 3:36 PM
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It was the soundscape in the game that got me, I'm used to the monsters and such, but the ambience really got to me - so I never really got far. Perhaps I should summon the courage up for it again.

cinergy 06/08/2009 3:38 PM
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So you have your nvidia optimized game reviewed now (and of course not showing ATI driver version used, which is probably old). Fine. Next time you could put directx 10.1 exclusive game and show how badly nvidia performs there. And no old drivers trick this time!

roorunner 06/08/2009 3:41 PM
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Thank you for the article. Reading it and following your links, I found my favorite game of all time supports this! And I am glad I have Nvidia graphic cards! Tonight - updating the drivers and taking the game for a testdrive! Thanks!!!!

Lans 06/08/2009 4:09 PM
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cinergy, I don't disagree with you on the Nvidia bias or DX10.1 . :)

Being an AMD/ATI fan myself, you are inherently favor one vendor (Nvidia) over another (ATI) when you have exclusives on features that not all vendors support. Still, it was informative to me and it is not the reviewer's fault that not all vendor support said feature.

As far as I know, this site is not among the few that had an in-depth look at Assassin's Creed and DX10.1 mess. Now with DX11 looming, maybe we'll finally see a DX10.1 review in form DX11 preview? :)

I guess you can call the selection of which features to cover and which not to cover clear favoring Nvidia at the moment...

avatar_raq 06/08/2009 4:15 PM
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It's nice to do performance analysis for games, but it'll be nicer if its done soon after their release, I finished this game twice (one @1280x1024 and the other @1920x1080) before this article!
Nevertheless, keep up the good work.

daft 06/08/2009 4:29 PM
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considering that the game was released back in october.....

nerdherd 06/08/2009 4:55 PM
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I think this is a great article. I would LOVE to see an article done like this for more major game releases closer to their actual release date! Maybe even a few days before the game gets officially released? That would be awesome.

megamanx00 06/08/2009 5:27 PM
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Poor little 4650. I played this game on high with one 3850 at 1680x1050. Anyway this article is a little late, but better late than never. Dead space is an awesome game. It seems like NVIDIAs new AO option doesn't really do much for it.

Cleeve 06/08/2009 5:55 PM
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daft :
considering that the game was released back in october.....



Aha, but in October Nvidia's new AO feature wasn't here, now was it? Read the first page of the article.

As far as thwe next game, I'm gunning for Red Faction: Guerilla

Cleeve 06/08/2009 6:04 PM
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Lans :
cinergy, I don't disagree with you on the Nvidia bias or DX10.1 . Being an AMD/ATI fan myself, you are inherently favor one vendor (Nvidia) over another (ATI) when you have exclusives on features that not all vendors support.



See, I *do* disagree with you guys. There is no Nvidia BIAS here, I simply wanted to see what their new feature can do. And if it turned out to be good, it's exposure and reviews like this that can spurn AMD to looking at including such a feature themselves.

Also guys - if there was a bias, wouldn't I have been screaming from the rooftops that it was the best thing sincle sliced bread? I'm pretty sure I let folks know the feature was best left off unless you happened to have a graphics card that could handle it easily.

DirectX 10.1... now, that's a great feature, but I'm waiting for a new, killer title to exploit it. Tom Clancy's HAWX shows a great improvement with Dx10.1, the visuals are awesome. The problem is that the game sucks, so I'm not going to waste time on an in-depth analysis of something I wouldn't recommend. Assasin's Creed, well, I missed the boat on that one because this series is relatively new, but I'm hoping Assasin's Creed II will give give us another chance.

Similarly, Nvidia is trying to tell everyone how great PhysX is, and I keep reminding everyone it's a useless feature in 99% of the games it's been included in. Mirror's Edge would be the closest thing to a must-have title for that feature, but with PhysX looking to be included in future DirectX APIs when physis becomes more mainstream, I'm not sure Nvidia will have any lasting advantage there. Too far ahead of the curve.

As for CUDA... mreh. Still haven't seen anything that makes me say "wow".

JWL3 06/08/2009 6:10 PM
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How appropriate. I just downloaded the game last week and started playing. Despite all the positive reviews, the game doesn't draw me in for the following reasons:

1) the controls suck. I cannot even assign my usual arrow key buttons to movement what the f?

2)It takes me two button presses to get my weapon out. Why? Why? Why? Why can't I just use my left mouse button to fire? Why must I bring up the rig and then fire? And forget about changing weapons. You literally have to put your weapon down, change weapons, click ok, bring new weapon up, and fire. Are you effing kidding me???

3) the third person perspective is awful. Not only is it nauseating, the fun of FPS's is that you feel like you're the person in the game.

4) The zero-gravity sites are annoying. I'm relieved when those parts of the game are over - they're tedious as all heck.

5) Again with the controls, you'd think using a health pack was easy, Nope. Open inventory, select health pack, select use, close inventory. Wow.

I can't count the number of times I've had to reload the level cause I couldn't switch to the appropriate weapon in time. Get a freaking clue EA. I used to be a huge fan of EA, buying 10 of their games each year. Until they screwed PC users by canceling all the EA sports games for the PC. I swore from that point on that I wouldn't buy another EA game (produced or distributed or whatever). I'm glad I didn't buy this POS game.


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