GeForce And Radeon On Intel's P67: PCIe Scaling Explored

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Intel’s Sandy Bridge-based processors dramatically advance gaming value by increasing performance at lower prices than LGA 1366-based configurations. But is the platform it sits on worthy of that CPU? We test three slot configurations to find out.

Benchmark Results: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call Of Pripyat

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat benchmark is the only part of our analysis where the Nvidia card sheds more performance than AMD in the transition from x16 to x4. Count on a 6% to 10% loss for the GeForce GTX 570 and a 6% to 8% loss for the Radeon HD 6950 when using the shorter slot.

Performance differences drop to around 4% at 2560x1600. Either card requires that AA be disabled to achieve smooth game play at this resolution and Ultra details.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.