Star Swarm, Thief, Tomb Raider, And WoW
Star Swarm Stress Test
Given AMD’s use of the Star Swarm demo to show how Mantle alleviates CPU dependency, we hoped to use the DirectX-based build for the opposite purpose. But our frame rate over time graph is downright frenetic. It’s hard to know whether a 300-second sample accurately pits these platforms against each other.
To be fair, Oxide Games concedes to the non-deterministic nature of its stress test. It’s the same issue we face trying to benchmark Arma 3 and Battlefield 4’s multi-player components—as soon as you involve the AI calculations needed to tax a processor, variability starts affecting the results. Removing this would shift the bottleneck back over to graphics.
Thief
The Core i7-5820K shows up at the top of another gaming chart, again followed by Core i7-4790K. Not that the results in Thief are particularly telling. All of these CPUs are fast enough to keep up with a single GeForce GTX Titan.
Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider has the -4790K on top of the -5820K, though both CPUs trail Intel’s Core i7-3970X. In reality, there’s just no way you’d be able to distinguish between any of these platforms, particularly considering their low frame time variance numbers.
World of Warcraft
WoW is another game known for exaggerating platform characteristics. And you can add it to the list of titles particularly fond of Intel’s Core i7-5820K, with the -4790K not far behind. Flip through to the frame rate over time chart, and you’ll see a tight grouping through our benchmark run.
If anything, the Core i7-5960X’s lower clock rate negatively affects its frame time variance result. The same holds true in almost every other game benchmark, too.
