Metro 2033 is an older title, but it still presents modern hardware with a taxing workload. It's notorious for being GPU-limited, so we're not expecting CPU performance to make a massive difference in this game's outcome (at least, based on the data we've generated up until now).

Most of our CPUs maintain an average of at least 50 FPS. The dual-core A4s and the Athlon II X3 fall under 40, and the Pentium G860 sits in between with a 47 FPS average.
The minimums are similar across the board, suggesting that something other than the varying CPUs is dictating the performance floor.Â
Compare these results to what we saw in Picking A Sub-$200 Gaming CPU: FX, An APU, Or A Pentium? a year ago. You'll notice that the average frame rates are up on almost all of the CPUs except for Intel's Pentium G860 and AMD's Athlon II X3. At the time, the Radeon HD 7970 we used was brand new, and its drivers were decidedly immature, which may help explain why a similar-performing GeForce GTX 680 fares better today.

It's quite clear that the processors we're testing limit most of the first half of this benchmark, while the GPU load picks up about two-thirds of the way in, pulling all test beds down under 20 FPS.

In general, the results are very good news for folks with inexpensive processors, since we're seeing low latencies between consecutive frames. The dual-core A4s are the worst performers by far, with a 95th percentile lag time of about 20 milliseconds.
How about a bit of perspective? On average, the A4 APUs run at about 35 FPS. That 20-millisecond lag would insert a single frame corresponding to around 20 FPS. If that happened once every 100 frames, at 35 FPS, it would happen about once every 2.5 seconds. That's an oversimplification because the percentile is pulled from the entire course of the benchmark, but it's a useful way of imagining what's going on.
On the other hand, the Pentium G860 and Athlon II X3 450 experience a roughly 10-millisecond lag at the 95th percentile, representing a single frame time drop at 40 FPS down to an equivalent 30 FPS. That's not as big of a difference. Only the FX-4300, A10-5800K, and FX-4170 have a 95th percentile lag of more than eight milliseconds. The rest of the field is under six, and we consider that result statistically insignificant.
what is the point of running the latency tests if you're not going to use it in your conclusion?
We absolutely did take latency into account in our conclusion.
I think the problem is that you totally misunderstand the point of measuring latency, and the impact of the results. Please read page 2, and the commentary next to the charts.
To summarize, latency is only relevant if it's significant enough to notice. If it's not significant (and really, it wasn't in any of the tests we took except maybe in some dual-core examples), then, obviously, the frame rate is the relevant measurement.
*IF* the latency *WAS* horrible, say, with a high-FPS CPU, then in that case latency would be taken into account in the recommendations. But the latencies were very small, and so they don't really factor in much. Any CPUs that could handle at least four threads did great, the latencies are so imperceptible that they don't matter.
what is the point of running the latency tests if you're not going to use it in your conclusion?
Nice observation. I was wondering the same thing. It's time you provide conclusion based upon what you intended to test and not otherwise. You could state the FPS part after the fact.
We absolutely did take latency into account in our conclusion.
I think the problem is that you totally misunderstand the point of measuring latency, and the impact of the results. Please read page 2, and the commentary next to the charts.
To summarize, latency is only relevant if it's significant enough to notice. If it's not significant (and really, it wasn't in any of the tests we took except maybe in some dual-core examples), then, obviously, the frame rate is the relevant measurement.
*IF* the latency *WAS* horrible, say, with a high-FPS CPU, then in that case latency would be taken into account in the recommendations. But the latencies were very small, and so they don't really factor in much. Any CPUs that could handle at least four threads did great, the latencies are so imperceptible that they don't matter.
Not really. We just report them a little differently in an attempt to distill the result. Read page 2.
I'm not sure what you're referring to. When we test games, we use a number of different settings and resolutions.
http://www.tomshardware.com/articles/?articleType=review
It's coming. Lots of other stuff to do, but it's coming.
An exactly benchmarks or "benchmarks" like this one misleads most of the Intel's fun-boys.
Except they weren't cheap for their time.
eg: 945 was $280 for its 1st year? :\
Spend that now and what do you get?
but then again what's making AMD hard to swallow is the abysmal TDP ratings of their APUs. hopefully you guys can explicitly explain how an a8-5500 manages 65w while a a8-5600k pulls 100w with just a 300mhz difference?
or with power constraints, what would be more effective? an ivy bridge celeron + 6670 or a6/a8 APU? apart from the usual load/idle, what about posting-in-a-forum-power-consumption?
i would love to post my questions on the forums but i'm pretty sure the thread'll be just ravaged by fanboys or wouldn't get a pertinent answer.
thanks!!!
Because there are so many products, this was defined as a round-up. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's currently possible to use both Reviews and Round-ups as filters at the same time. So, they don't show up together. I'm going to pass this feedback back to France to see if Round-ups can be folded into Reviews.