Does It Have Game?
Once we have I/O out of the way, it’s time to get down to the business of gaming. Like our desktop tests, we start the gaming tests with a Futuremark produced testing suite; 3DMark Vantage in this case. Like PCMark Vantage, 3DMark Vantage uses it’s own internal components and engine to test various aspects related to gaming performance.
If you though the desktop performance numbers we a close heat, check out the results above. 3DMark Vantage produced results between the two boards that were so close to each other, any deviation can simply be chalked up to operating conditions on the computer at the time. Hopefully some real world game tests will break things up a little.
Crysis
It appears to have split things up a little in Crysis. Though 1 or 2 FPS in other shooters aren’t much, the engine Crysis uses is so punishing that when calculating averages those median 1 or 2 FPS can mean 5 or 7 FPS difference on either end of the average. When running in “Very High” mode, like we were here, that can make the difference between moving through an immersive 3D world and watching a slideshow. Unfortunately for Asus, the GIGABYTE board is the victor here, though once again not by much.
World in Conflict
World in Conflict is a little more forgiving with its 3D rendering. This game is fully 3D top down RTS title, and since it’s units are smaller it provides for a much smoother experience. The results posted in our tests are indeed so small as to be a non-issue. Both boards are quite competent in gaming.
Overclocking
The conversation on overclocking with the Asus M4A79T Deluxe is actually a fairly short one. With our modest attempts at overclocking our test CPU, Â I was able to push it to 3.6GHz like the World Champion GIGABYTE board. However, at that clock speed a little more finessing was needed to get it to run stable whereas the GIGABYTE board was clearly made to pump out high frequencies under extreme conditions. I had to bring it back to ~3.5GHz to get things to run.
If you are into running some serious clock speeds with extreme measures over and above air cooling, then this is not your board since it already rolls with a small handicap. However, for general use and the fact that Asus has provided their “Turbo Button” feature, I could see this board making a great addition in a gaming rig where overclocks are much more modest and are done with stability in mind.