Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
From EP2 I moved on to a 3D shooter I thought would present a much greater challenge to the Phenom 9850. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a graphically rich game that succeeds in its simplicity, and unlike EA’s attempts it actually works. For testing, we ran through the first part of the first USMC mission and using Fraps recorded the average framerate. This produced some very good numbers. Overclocking the processor produced a 10% increase in performance over stock.
Graphically, game play held up well. Our benchmark level contains a lot of close areas, which drives up framerates. But when I got out to more open terrain, or night scenes with lots of lighting effects, I was still easily pulling 60 – 70 FPS average. The overclock helped a bit, with an increase in performance of between 9% and 11% depending on AI and physics load.
Crysis
The final game, and the final benchmark, consists of none other then the butcher of performance known as Crysis. For testing we once again turned to the folks HardwareOC, and their benchmarking tools. The Crysis tool comes with separate demos used for testing CPU performance, which go by the names of Ice and Island. Ice is obviously the more punishing of the two, as consists of a timedemo of our technologically enhanced soldier laying waste to a small village using a big gun. With objects flying everywhere and explosions abound, this test puts pressure on the CPU for physics and the GPU for graphics. Island consists of some destruction, and then throws in some wlaking around in the jungle. This makes it less punishing, but still puts a good deal of stress on components.
Actually the two demos are rather telling of the two sides of playing through Crysis with my current hardware. It’s typically a smooth experience, but when action really heats up graphics rendering can start to lag. And I’m not talking a minor fire fight with a few enemies; I’m talking about levelling small villages with large weapons. Still the performance of the Phenom 9850 was admirable. I think it’s time we wrapped this up.
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