Benchmarks: Gaming (Low Quality)

The GeForce GTX 280 was clearly a limitation in the previous gaming tests, so we have run through all the same games again at a low resolution using low quality visuals. Although no one will ever play these games using these settings with this much computing power, the test removes the GPU bottleneck, which should give you some idea where these processors may stand when tested with future more powerful graphics cards.

As you can see, the Core i7 processors are now clearly faster in Unreal Tournament with the Core i7 920 beating the Core 2 Quad Q9650 by a small margin. The Core i7 940 delivers another 3.5% more performance, while the Core i7 965 EE is another 8% faster again. The overclocked Core i7 965 EE seems to hit a brick wall at around 320fps.

The Core i7 are again the superior processors as the Core i7 920 delivered 7% more performance than the Core 2 Quad Q9650. The Core i7 940 was only a fraction faster. The Core i7 965 EE remained strong on top but overclocking had a more generous impact, making it 28% faster than the Q9650.

Again the Core i7 processors are able to edge out the competition starting with the Core i7 920 and the rest of the pack improving as the frequency of the Core i7 processors increased.

As we saw when testing Far Cry 2 using high visual quality settings, this game seems to rely more heavily on processing power to deliver the best performance. While the Core i7 processors are considerably faster than the competition, they are not too much faster than each other.

The Core i7 965 EE was 24% faster than the Core 2 Quad Q9650, but just 7% faster than the Core i7 920.