DiRT Showdown features an advanced lighting model, but how does the CPU factor in?

Once again, the Pentium, Athlon II X3, and dual-core APUs struggle at the back of the pack. All of the other chips achieve at least 60 FPS on average, and no fewer than 50 FPS. Again, that's a different story altogether compared to what we saw in last year's shoot-out under $200, where the Pentium tied AMD's A8-3870K in DiRT 3.

The frame rate over time chart suggests that even AMD's A4 APUs might be playable, since they hug 30 FPS most of the time.

DiRT Showdown exhibits low consecutive frame latencies. Only the A4-5300 hits 10 milliseconds; the rest of the field is under eight.
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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.