AMD Athlon 64 FX-60

Quake 4:

If you hadn't already guessed, Quake 4's 1.0.5 patch enables support for multiple threads. There are some problems with NVIDIA's Forceware release 80 drivers, in that the two lots of dual-core optimised code gets in the way of each other. In some instances, we saw a performance drop with the latest driver. However, NVIDIA has told us that the issue will be fixed in a driver update - I've been given no indication as to precisely when that will happen, but it is expected to happen soon. We've chosen to use the Forceware 78.03 drivers to give you an idea of what can be achieved.

The dual core processors really dominate this benchmark, especially the Athlon 64's. The FX-60 managed to show a 53% performance increase over the FX-55 that is clocked at the same speed - that's quite impressive without a doubt. Also, it's good to see that Intel is competing with Athlon 64's in gaming scenarios - the XE 955, 950 and 940 all managed to outperform the single core Athlon 64's.

Increasing the resolution tightens the bunch and the FX-57 leap frogs the Pentium D 950 and 940 processors. The FX-60 still remains the fastest CPU in Quake 4, though.