Benchmark Results: DiRT 3, Metro 2033, And StarCraft II

From our more productivity-oriented benchmarks, we know to expect at most an 8% performance improvement from the Racer 2.0’s Ivy Bridge-based processor compared to Sandy Bridge.

We also know from experience that CPU performance has its biggest gaming impact at the lowest resolutions and detail settings, where the GPU is too lightly loaded to become a bottleneck. We’ll look for an impact attributable to the GPU as resolution and detail levels increase.

DiRT 3 presents somewhat of a problem for our analysis in that the GeForce GTX 675M appears most advantageous at the low resolutions where CPU bottlenecks should occur.

Crank up the detail levels, though, and the GeForce GTX 675M appears to be an equal to AMD's Radeon HD 6990M.The GeForce GTX 660M hinders the Racer 2.0 moderately at our highest quality settings, regardless of resolution.

The GeForce GTX 660M stumbles in Metro 2033, requiring 1600x900 at our lower detail settings to retain relatively smooth game play. The 675M pushes the Racer 2.0’s capability to 1920x1080 at the same detail levels, but the game really favors AMD graphics.

All configurations play StarCraft II proficiently, though the GeForce GTX 675M is notably better than its older competition. Regardless of its lower model number, the GeForce GTX 660M is more than sufficient for this title.