Here we go, a lot of people asked me to test an Intel Core 2 Quad under recent 3D games with an HD 7970 so here is what I did. Like for the Core2Duo test we published last week, I chose the most popular processor which in this case is the Intel C2Q Q6600. However this time we did not simply test it at stock frequency, we overclocked it to 3.0 GHz. Why 3.0 GHz only one would ask, well that way I was able to use exactly the same BIOS settings I did use for the C2D E8400. Just kidding, the main reason is that to run this processor fully stable at 3.0 GHz you don't need any voltage increase and you can use a default bus speed which is 333 MHz FSB in this case. Enough talking, let's see how the Core2Quad Q6600 clocked at 3 GHz will perform against today's processors like the i7 3770K and FX-8150 under heavy 3D workloads conditions such as Benchmarks and recent Games with highest graphics settings possible at a resolution of 1920x1080. Let's get it started!Introduction
Find all the benchmarks/games results on the following pages.
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Test Setup
Hardware
| Mainboard |
|
| CPUs |
|
| Memory |
|
| Graphic Cards (Driver) |
|
| Drivers |
|
| OS |
|
| HDD |
|
| PSU |
|
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Benchmarks and Games Settings
Futuremark
- 3DMark 11
(1.0.3)
- GPU Test - Performance Preset
- 3DMark Vantage (1.1.0)
- GPU Test - Performance Preset
Unigine Heaven DX11 Benchmark
| Version | 3.0 |
| API | DirectX 11 |
| Tessellation | Extreme |
| Shaders | High |
| Anisotropy | 16x |
| Stereo 3D | Disabled |
| Anti-aliasing | 8x |
| Full Screen | Yes |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
Geeks3D TessMark
| Version | 0.3.0 |
| Map Set | Set 4 (2048 x 204 |
| Tesselation | Insane (x64) |
| Full Screen | Yes |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Anti-aliasing | 8x |
| Tessellation | High |
| Duration | 60000 (ms) |
Geeks3D FurMark (Burn-in test)
| Version | 1.10.0 |
| Full Screen | Yes |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Anti-aliasing | 8x MSAA |
Alien vs Predator DX11 Benchmark
| Texture Quality | Very High |
| Shadow Quality | High |
| Hardware Tesselation | Yes |
| Advance Shadow Sampling | Yes |
| Full Srceen Anti-Aliasing Samples | 4x |
| Anisotropic Filtering | 16x |
| SSAO | On |
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
Batman: Arkham City Integrated Benchmark
| FullScreen | Yes |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| V Sync | No |
| Anti-Aliasing | 8x MSAA |
| Stereoscopic 3D Status | No |
| DirectX 11 Features | MVSS And HBAO |
| DirectX 11 Tesselation | High |
| Detail Level | Extreme |
| Dynamic Shadow | Yes |
| Motion Blur | Yes |
| Distortion | Yes |
| Lens Flares | Yes |
| Light Shafts | Yes |
| Reflections | Yes |
| Ambient Occlusion | Yes |
| Hardware Accelerated PhysX | Off |
Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3 (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| FullScreen | On |
| Vertical Sync | Off |
| Field of view | 70 |
| Motion Blur Amount | Max |
| Graphics Quality | Ultra |
BattleField 3 (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Aspect Ratio | Wide 16:9 |
| Anti-Aliasing | 4x |
| Screen Refresh Rate | 60 Hz |
| Sync Every Frame | No |
| Shadows | Yes |
| Specular Map | Yes |
| Depth Of Field | Yes |
| Screen Space Ambient Occlusion | High Quality |
| Soften Smoke Edges | Yes |
| Bullet Impacts | Yes |
| Image Quality | Ultra |
Crysis 2 DX11 + HiRes Texture Pack Benchmark
| Quality | Ultra |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Anti-Aliasing | 4x |
| Map | Central Park/Adrenaline |
| Runs | 1 |
| API | DirectX 11 |
| Edge AA | Edge AA |
| Hi-Res Textures | On |
DIRT 2 Integrated Benchmark
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Refresh Rate | 60 |
| MultiSampling | 8x MSAA |
| VSync | Off |
| Aspect Ration | 16:9 |
| Details | Ultra Preset |
Dragon Age II (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Full Screen Mode | Yes |
| Renderer | DirectX 11 |
| Vertical Sync | no |
| Graphics Detail | Very High |
| Anti-Aliasing | 8x |
| Anisotropic Filtering | 16x |
| Screen Space Ambient Occlusion | Yes |
| Diffusion Depth of Field | Yes |
| High Quality Blur | Yes |
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Aspect Ratio | Wide 16:9 |
| Anti-Aliasing | 8x |
| Anisotropic-Filtering | 16x |
| Details | Ultra |
| Vertical Sync | Disabled |
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat Benchmark
| Preset | Ultra |
| Renderer | Enhan. full dyn. lighting (DX11) |
| Video Mode | 1920 x 1080 |
| MSAA | 4x |
| MSAA for A-tested objects | DX10.0 Style [Standard] |
| SSAO Mode | HDAO |
| SSAO Quality | High |
| Use DX10.1 | No |
| Enable Tesselation | Yes |
| Contact Hardening Shadows | Yes |
StarCraft II (5 Minutes GamePlay)
| Display Mode | Fullscreen |
| Refresh Rate | Default |
| Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Vertical Sync | No |
| Texture Quality | Ultra |
| Graphics Quality | Ultra |
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
3DMark 11
3DMark Vantage
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Unigine Heaven
TessMark
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Alien vs Predator
Batman: Arkham City
DIRT 2
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
BattleField 3
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Crysis 2
Dragon Age 2
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
StarCraft 2
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Power Consumption
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Benchmark Summary
Synthetic Benchmarks
Games
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Performance Index
Performance/Price
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Conclusion
As you can see from those results, the Intel Core2Quad is still
up to date if you compare it to the FX-4170/FX-8150 from AMD. Okay in some games
like Call of Duty, Skyrim and StarCraft II, the AMD FXs are 10 % faster than the
Core2Quad but that's all. Everywhere else those processors are scoring almost
the same at +/- 1% in both games and synthetic benchmarks. Talking about games
only and throwing away synthetic benchmarks away from the calculation, the AMD
FXs processors are only 3 % faster in average. Which is not bad at all since
the Q6600 is five and a half years old, has only four cores clocked at 3.0 GHz
(for this test, stock frequency is 2.4 GHz) and powered by DDR2 Memory. Why the
Core2Quad is not far away behind latest AMD's processor for example? There are several
reasons but the main ones are the following:
- Today's games are still not optimized for multicore processors.
- AMD's FX architecture result in serious lacks of performance. Mostly due to
non optimized softwares.
Now if you compare the Q6600 to the i7 3770K you see a serious
gap performancewise going from almost nothing up to twice the performance. But hey, this is another league. Anyway the results are in
and here is what we see:
- You don't see any performance improvement going for the Core2Quad to the Core
i7 in Alien vs Predator.
- The Core i7 is about 5-6 % faster than the Q6600
under BattleField 3, Crysis 2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
- The gap is only 8 % under Dragon Age II.
-
Some big numbers: The Core i7 is 20 % faster under Batman, 28 % faster under
DIRT2 et
45 % under Call of Duty.
- Now comes the real big numbers: The Core i7 kicked
Q6600's butt by 73.1 % under Skyrim and 91 % under StarCraft II, almost twice
the performance.
What if you are still using a Core 2 Duo processor, would the
Core 2 Quad be worth the upgrade gaming performancewise? Well in my opinion yes,
go for it, here is why:
- Increase performance by 20 up to 35 % in half of
the games we tested here, and Crysis 2 even with his 40.3 fps wasn't smooth with
our C2D E8400 and here it was with the Q6600.
- Increase of 2D performance as
well of course, meaning daily usage of your computer will be faster and smoother.
- Easy overclocking to 3.0 GHz using 333 MHz FSB and no need to increase
voltage.
- Easy upgrade, no need to change motherboard in most case nor
memory and cooling.
- Price: you can find it on ebay for around 70 $ USD.
- And also because now I have one and need to sell it!
Conclusion: the Core2Quad still has some hidden power and doesn't give up too easy. If you take a look at the performance/price ratio you can see that the ratio is very close to the FX-8150 and way better than the Core i7 3770K but unfortunately way lower than the FX-4170 and E8400. The reason is that this processor is highly unavailable, using geizhals.at as price comparison tool you can find the boxed version for 170 Euros which is very expensive. While if you take a look at ebay you can easily find it for around 70 Euros max, which in this case gives him the impressive performance/price ratio of 14, destroying anything else. For the record the performance/price ratio is calculated like this: PerformanceIndex / Price x 10. As for the price of other processors we tested here - using geizhals.at - in EU the C2D E8400 is priced at 140€, the FX-4170 and FX-8150 offers start at 116 and 175€ and finally the big boy is worth 300€.
Anyway stay tuned as I said in our previous article the
following CPUs are to follow:
Intel Core i7 920
Intel Core i7 920 @ 4 GHz
Intel Core i5 2500K
Intel Core i3 Ivy Bridge
AMD Phenom II x6 1090T BE
AMD Phenom II x4 970
Hey guys, which fight do you want to
see next time? Feel free to leave a comment!
Discuss this article in the forums