For time reasons I'll step away from the direct Quad Core competing processor and we'll focus on our main graphics test system as used for the last year and a half, and then compare it with a new system based on the X58 with Core i7 965, merely to show you the performance scaling.

We are now expanding the resolutions from 1024x768 up-to 2560x1600. A lot of work to measure and test. But fact is, anno 2008 with Single GPU game rendering, when you go really extreme with your CPU, it just doesn't matter intensely.

SLI and Crossfire is another story though, but we are showing you that in another dedicated article as well. Check it out.

Gaming: Call of Duty 4

Activision recently released Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the next installment in the popular war game series. Moving away from the World War II setting, Modern Warfare instead centers around a conflict involving Russia and the Middle East. And hey, you even get to die ... and then continue the game in the past.

Ever since the start Call of Duty 4 has been 100% GPU bound. And even in late 2008, that's still the case with a GeForce GTX 280. It's one of these titles where a CPU doesn't matter real quick.

Only in hefty SLI and Crossfire situations, that faster CPU would start to matter. We are publishing a multi-GPU Core i7 | X58 article by the way, we'll get you all that info, don't worry. But for now a 1:1 comparison with the faster Single GPU based system.

Image Quality setting:

• 4x Anti Aliasing
• 16x anisotropic filtering
• All settings maxed out

Gaming: Crysis - Single Player v1.2

With mankind facing an alien cataclysm, your elite Delta force and North Korean forces combine, united by common humanity in a battle to save Earth. Graphically stunning, tactically challenging and always intensely immersive, Crysis sets player choice at the heart of its gameplay, with customizable tactical weaponry and adaptable armor allowing instant response to changing conditions. Crysis doesn't feel all that different from its predecessor, Far Cry. Both are set on an island. Both involve a latent alien menace. Both bid you move more or less linearly through shaggy jungle areas, where the fact that you're progressing in a single direction is camouflaged by your ability to approach obstacles in your path any way you like. Think the "every time you play a situation yields radically different behaviors and results" approach in games like Rainbow Six Vegas or Gears of War except on more of a geographic scale.

Oh yeah, you probably want to hear about how it performs, right?

Crysis is a title that does like multiple CPU cores, yet once you have more than 2 .. (dual-core) that advantage seems to stagnate real fast. What it however does like are are CPU's that, on a clock for clock basis, are faster. Since the Core i7 processors 'per core' is faster than the last-gen products, you can see a small performance increase.

Image Quality setting:

• 0x Anti Aliasing
• 16x anisotropic filtering
• Medium image quality settings