Benchmark Results: CPUs
Let’s see how Deus Ex: Human Revolution reacts to different processor clock rates:
Performance is clearly tied to frequency on these quad-core processors, although the game shows a clear preference for Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture. The Core i5 at 3 GHz demonstrates a big advantage over the Phenom II X4 at 3.5 GHz. However, it's important to note that all of the minimum frame rates are above 40 FPS.
Now let’s see how the game reacts to different numbers of execution cores, and Hyper-Threading technology:
There’s a huge drop in performance between the quad-core i5-2500K and the dual-core, Hyper-Threaded Core i3-2100 at the same clock rate, suggesting that this engine is optimized for threading. Having said that, there’s no notable difference between the Phenom II X4 and X6, so the game does not appear to use more than four cores. At less than four cores, Phenom II performance is drastically reduced, and the dual-core model doesn’t satisfy at all.