CPU scaling in games with dual & quad core processors - 4 - CPU performance - World in Conflict

World in Conflict

Impressive gameplay and graphics that will make you go into shock and awe. Yes, World in Conflict has been released. This game offers a serious graphical challenge to you guys, the gamers. Wars often end in either victory, loss or compromise.

Vivendi Universal recently was kind enough to send us a copy a couple of days prior to the release of the game. You are an avid Guru3D reader so that means you also know we'll do things a bit differently. It's not moving very fast, but slowly we see more and more DirectX 10 titles becoming available on the market.

World in Conflict is a late Cold War real-time strategy game with a strong focus on unit tactics, action, team play, and destruction. Players take on a specific role commanding air, armor, infantry, and support units to form a combined arms force against the enemy. By controlling key strategic points on the map, you sway the battle in your favor. There is no resource-gathering, so every second not spent fighting the enemy over a piece of land is a second wasted.

Image Quality setting:

• 0x Anti Aliasing
• 16x anisotropic filtering

What you are observing above are the results done with the medium (DX9) setting.

The next game in-line for our mega-test was World in Conflict. What an awesome game. WiC is just much more CPU bound than COD4 is, and that really shows. Therefore it's an excellent way to measure and look at CPU performance with this game.

WiC definitely utilizes at least 2 logical CPU cores and loves the newer processors. At entry level the AMD Phenom processors seem to offer good value. In the high-end segment we see the new 45nm Penryn based processors really kick in hard.

At 1280x1024 we still see a lot of performance differentiation yet all 100-300 USD processors seem to perform pretty close to each other. The budget has a hard time keeping up though.

At a resolution of 1600x1200 things settle down and the GPU becomes more of a factor.

One thing we can not deny though, the Phenoms offer heaps of value, while the 45nm Q9450 & QX9770 simply offer the best performance. But focus on the Dual-core E8400 for a moment and keep that processor in mind. It sells for roughly 200 bucks and throughout this article it will show very high-end performance.

And one again at 2560x1600 we see GPU limitation kicking in hard.