Benchmark Results: DiRT3, StarCraft II, And Skyrim
AMD's architectures have a history of affecting CPU scaling in certain games. We've seen this in a few of our older system builds, but occasionally in other graphics comparisons. We certainly didn’t expect this issue to affect a notebook employing Intel’s Ivy Bridge architecture, even though the mobile models are slower than the desktop versions.
Paired with AMD's Radeon HD 7970M, the Core i7-3820QM limits DiRT 3 to around 73 FPS. Higher detail levels shift enough of the workload to the GPU that it becomes our bottleneck, and that’s where Xotic PC’s custom-configured NP9150 excels.
Xotic PC’s Radeon HD 7970M continues its overall dominance through our Skyrim tests.
StarCraft II is Xotic PC’s gaming coup de grace, having overtaken its competitor in a broad majority of 3D benchmarks.