CPU Performance
The above frame rates don't tell the full story. Dying Light appears to run quite well on a low-end dual-core processor such as the Celeron G1820 and for the most part it does. However, there are short periods of massive slow downs which dropped the average frame rate to 51fps from around 81fps.
Showing the minimum frame rate isn't very useful here though as we kept having low frames per second results with all CPUs. Some would dip just for a second once in our test, while others would do it more regularly.
As always, a Core i5 or Core i7 is going to net gamers the most reliable performance, though the AMD FX-8000 and FX-9000 series were just as good in Dying Light. Based on our experience, AMD Phenom and Intel Pentium/Celeron processors are going to deliver less reliable performance with more periods of noticeable frame lag.
Underclocking had a minimal impact on performance with the Core i7-4770K, while it reached the limit of the GTX 980 at just 3.5GHz.
Clocked at 4.5GHz the FX-9590 wasn't quite able to max out the GTX 980 like it did at its default 4.7GHz operating frequency with a 5.0GHz turbo boost. The FX-9590 shows how the FX series needs to hustle for the kind of performance you can expect from a much lower clocked Core i5 processor for example.