Crysis

Publisher: Electronic Arts

We tested the game using the 64-bit executable under and DirectX 10 with the 1.21 patch applied. We used a custom timedemo recorded on the Harbor map which is more representative of gameplay than the built-in benchmark that renders things much faster than you're going to experience in game.

For our testing, we set Texture Detail, Shadows Quality, Physics Quality, Shaders Quality and Water Quality to High, while all other settings were set to medium. Because of how intense the game is, we tested with both anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering disabled at resolutions above 1680x1050 for the time being. There is currently no support for anisotropic filtering in the game, but you can still force it from the driver control panel.





Crysis seemed to consistently not fare well for us as it only scraped ahead of the Gigabyte EP35-DS4 board by the smallest of average margins. However, compared to the DDR3 boards and X38 from Abit they both seem to eke out just that much more. We knew that Crysis likes DDR3 from testing the nForce 790i Ultra SLI, but it seems the combination of PCI-Express 2.0 and DDR3 is just that much better.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Publisher: Activision

Built on an updated version of id Software's Doom 3 engine, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is a team-based first person shooter that recently obtained the title of being the first game to use John Carmack's megatexture technology: a single texture that spans the entire map.

ET:QW also makes use of many vehicles and large open areas which means the action in view can get really intensive in this team based shooter. It's also the only game in this suite that utilises OpenGL instead of the pretty much industry-standard DirectX API. We used the full retail version of the game patched to version 1.4.

We recorded a timenetdemo on the Valley level which lasts for several minutes during an online game – this used lots of the different graphical effects to create what we've deemed to be a fairly typical slice of action to stress the system. We also created a custom autoexec file that enabled ultra high video settings, over and above that of the standard in game "high", while soft particles was left disabled for the time being.


The P5Q Deluxe stands out again and performs even a fraction ahead of the Abit IX38 QuadGT, but also a fraction below the Gigabyte X48T DDR3 board on average. The PCI-Express 2.0 boards are making only about a single frame per second extra over the PCI-Express 1.1 boards based on the P35 chipset too.

World in Conflict

Publisher: Sierra

For our testing purposes, we used a full retail copy of the game and patched it to version 1.007, which includes a few fixes and some improved performance under DirectX 10. We used a manual run through from the Invasion level, which incorporates all of the effects the game has to offer. We chose not to use the built-in benchmark because it's largely CPU-limited. We used the "very high" preset, and controlled anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering via the advanced settings tab.


World in Conflict mirrors the results above – the PCI-Express 2.0 boards come out on top and the P5Q Deluxe is the fastest DDR2 board tested. While its average fps mirrors that of the Abit IX38 QuadGT, its minimum fps is a few higher on average.