Ready to 
Phenom II X2 550BE and Athlon II X2 250
Peter G.
June 1, 2009 9:00 PM ET in Tech
Crysis
Crysis is still one of the most GPU-centric games on the market and is considered by many to be the standard that new hardware is measured against. Crysis features both DX9 and DX10 support for Windows Vista, and we’ll be running it in both configurations for testing.
We used the “Crysis Benchmark Tool” to benchmark Crysis. The “benchmark_cpu” timedemo was used. There is quite a bit of building destruction and other heavy physics going on in this particular timedemo, and it is a good choice for CPU benchmarking. We used two different configurations for testing: The first uses a 1024×768 resolution and the Medium IQ settings to simulate a substantial CPU bottleneck and the second configuration is set for DX10 rendering and a higher 1680×1050 resolution with “High” IQ settings.
Both dual core chips give playable average frame rates in Crysis as the X2 550 ties the aged Core 2 Quad Q6600. Crysis likes memory bandwidth as much as cores so the Phenom II X2 has a good chance to equal things out with the Intel quad.
With Crysis cranked up to the high setting, we still maintain 30 fps average. Neither processor stands out, but neither falls flat on its face either.
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