Benchmark Results: Skyrim And StarCraft II
We expected big improvements in Skyrim, since this is a game that seems to emphasize processor performance, and AMD previously faltered in our benchmark. Instead, it seems that Skyrim is still completely CPU-limited at our least-demanding settings, at least on the FX-based platform.
While the results from our patched operating system are slightly higher, the difference is small to the point that we can't draw any concrete conclusions.
The Core i5-2500K’s performance advantage drops off at our most graphically-demanding setting, which tells us that this is where GPU bottlenecks limit any performance gain we'd see from the platform itself. We were really hoping the patches would put AMD’s FX-8150 in the same league at 1920x1080.
StarCraft II is GPU-bottlecked at 2560x1600 and CPU-constrained at lower resolutions. Yet, even the slowest configuration was able to achieve playable frame rates throughout the test. As a result, any advantage offered by Intel's Core i5 is superfluous.