Does It Got Game?
Video game benchmarks close out the testing. Demos from the game titles Crysis, Farcry 2, World at War, and Left 4 Dead were used to record average frame rates. Video resolution was set to 1920 x 1200 in order to better burden the system. Driver settings were left to default which lets the game (application) decide the Anisotropic and Anti-Aliasing settings.
We compare this board directly to our other budget champion, the ECS Black Series X58B-A “Nehalem” Motherboard. We reviewed this board earlier this year and found it to perform extremely well for the price. Let’s see how these two compete against eachother.
Crysis
It comes down to pennies and cents, so to speak. You also have to love just how smooth running Crysis has become. It takes a pretty beefy video card coupled with a pinch of FrontSide Bus to crank out 60 frames. The game sure is nice though above 50 frames per second with all the eye candy on.
Farcry 2
Not sure what prompted the extra frame rate here for the X58 Extreme. Farcry 2 ran smooth as glass in either case. Just make sure you keep saving along the way in game or you’ll be tossing your mouse as you start the mission all over again. As you know, the world’s are huge and there ain’t no auto save.
World at War
Oh, yeah! Nothing like 40 random players shooting, tossing grenades, calling in artillery strikes, and trying to knife each other. Makes for some of the most intense World War II type scenery. As you can see, no problems for either platform and advantages between the two platforms are minuscule.
Left 4 Dead
Then there’s the intense gun play as you try to avoid a couple hundred meat hungry zombies in dire need of some Noxema and a bubble bath! Just about anything can run this game, but we still like the excuse to play it. As you can see, results are pretty much a wash between both systems.