Benchmarks: CPU Scaling
With PhysX and anti-aliasing disabled the GPU becomes less of a bottleneck at 1290x1200 with the focus shifted towards the CPU. Using a GeForce GTX 480 we were able to obtain an average frame rate of 88fps using the overclocked Core i7 920 processor at 4.0GHz.
This same processor was slightly slower when operating at its default frequency of 2.66GHz delivering 83fps. Overclocking the Core i5 and Core i7 processors did very little to improve performance in Mafia II when using these quality settings.
The Phenom II X4 965 was ~4% slower than the Core i5 750, which is not bad. This also made it 8% faster than the Core i3 540 when working at its default operating frequency. We noted that Mafia II is quad-core optimized and as a result the Phenom II X2 555 was found to be 30% slower than the quad-core Phenom II X4 965 processor.
Now with PhysX enabled we again see a massive dive in performance when using the GeForce GTX 480 graphics card. Overclocking becomes far more critical as we saw a massive 34% jump in frame rate when overclocking the Core i7 920 processor. The Core i5 750 also enjoyed a 33% performance increase when going from the standard 2.66GHz to 4.0GHz.
Again we see that the Phenom II X4 965 is only slightly slower than the Core i5 750 processor, this time giving up 9% performance. Still that made it 35% faster than the dual-core Phenom II X2 555 processor which averaged just 23fps and as a result was unable to deliver playable performance.