Section 8: Prejudice PC Performance Analysis

Section 8: Prejudice is a first-person shooter video game developed by TimeGate Studios. It is the direct sequel to the 2009 game Section 8 and is a digital download-only title that contains more content than its predecessor. It was released for PC on May 4th and it's time to see how this Unreal 3 powered game performs with modern day PC's.

As always, we used a Q9650 @ 4.2Ghz with 4GB DDR2 and a GTX295. As we mentioned, Section 8: Prejudice is a first-person shooter that is powered by Unreal 3 engine. Contrary though to all those games that are powered by Epic's engine, performance is not as good as we'd hoped to. This is particularly due to Prejudice's inability to take full advantage of quadcores. Yeap, you read it right. A game powered by Unreal 3 engine that can't scale perfectly with modern day quadcores.

Benchmarking and Overclocking Q9650 Part 2

After our previous feature on overclocking the Q9650, we've been wondering how much we can push this CPU. We won't be bothering with water cooling solutions, as we want to see how much we can get with the air cooling solutions. So, time to see how much we can push the Q9650 on air.

We used a Gigabyte UD3LR EP45 motherboard with 4GB DDR2 Memory Kit from Kingston, a 1000W PSU from Coolermaster and a GTX295. As we said in our previous feature, in order to achieve a 4.0Ghz frequency we needed 1.45V VCore. That was before our latest tweaks. After messing with the CPU Termination, MCH Core and MCH Reference we managed to achieve 4.2Ghz with 1.4125V Vcore. This had a huge impact in our temperatures, so we strongly suggest not raising your Vcore above this value. Still, 1.4125V is quite high and you will definitely need a good CPU cooler.

Nvidia ForceWare 266.58 Drivers Released

Nvidia released today the much anticipated 26x.xx drivers for all their cards. These drivers are WHQL, so grab them if you were hesitant about trying the beta versions. The 266.58 have similar performance with the 266.44, so if you didn't encounter any problems with those drivers, there isn't any reason to move on. The same goes for the PhysX software, 3D and SLI profiles. Nothing is changed. Some users had encountered AA problems with the previous betas, although we didn't encounter any with our GTX295. Still, if you're one of them, we strongly suggest trying these latest drivers to see if your problems are resolved.

Nail'd PC Performance & Screenshots

Nail'd is the new ATV arcade racing from Techland. We were quite impressed with it, given the fact that Techland doesn't have any experience in this genre. Forget about everything, this is an arcade racing with loose physics and speed. Seriously, Nail'd is the fastest game we've ever played with some insane jumps and amazing tracks. Kudos to Techland for trying something different.

However, Nail'd is cursed by the same damn game mechanics that haunt every arcade racing game. We're talking about the CPU cheats. We were shocked when we played half of the game and didn't encounter any CPU cheating. But alas, at the 3/4 of the campaign, all the 'familiar' CPU cheats come to surface. Opponents are almost invicible, points aren't given even when slamming your opponents or when you push them to brake down their bikes, rubber banding is kicking in and they'll always catch up with you and their touchdowns are flawless. Funny thing is that even when the leader is in front of you and doesn't take the shortcuts to gain points from passing through gates or circles, he'll keep getting points for unknown reasons. It's really sad, because the first half of the game (which doesn't have those 'features') is highly enjoyable.

James Bond Blood Stone PC Performance & Screenshots

There is a curse that haunts every movie-to-game adaptation. Most of them suck. Let's face it, this is true. It's also true that due to the low standards and budgets of those games, companies don't support them for a long time. They don't address major performance issues and they don't fix small bugs. That was the case with Nightlife and Quantum Of Solace. So let's see what happens with Bond's latest game, Blood Stone.

We have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Nvidia has an SLI profile for this game and there is not a 30fps cap this time. The bad news... this is a console port that is CPU bound. So yeah, it's one of 'those' games that you'll need a I7 CPU to enjoy it at its fullest. We tested it with a Q9650 @ 4.2Ghz, 4GB DDR2 and a GTX295. Blood Stone was running most of the time with 60fps at 1080p with 4xAA and max details, although there were rare occasions where the framerate was dropping to 40-50.

Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit PC Performance & Screenshots

The latest installment of the legendary series, Need For Speed, has just been released. As usual, it's time to see how well the PC version performs and if Criterion did a good job porting the game. Yeah, you read it right. Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit for PC is simply a port from the console version, with all the cons of such a thing.

Although there is an option for High Resolution textures, Criterion didn't bother with taking advantage the additional raw power of the latest GPU's. Moreover, Criterion doesn't provide us with a lot of graphical options to adjust the game. FSAA is also not supported, although you can force it if you have an ATI card and Nvidia will likely support it with a better game profile in the next version of ForceWare. Graphically speaking, we have some great lighting effects and amazingly detailed cars. Stages are well designed, although they lack some fining details that would earn them some extra points. You won't notice their absence while driving, but still we'd like more environmental detail. All in all, Hot Pursuit is a nice game but nothing breathtaking!

Two Worlds II PC Performance & Tweaks

TopWare Interactive released a few days ago the much anticipated sequel of Two Worlds. In case you are wondering, Two Worlds II was released only in a few European countries, like Germany and will be released in early 2011 in UK and USA. Before you jump off your roof, know this. If it isn't released yet in your country, you can still buy it from GamersGate or Amazon. There there. Happy now? 

Reality Pump, the developers behind Two Worlds II, decided to address a lot of issues that plagued the first game. And frankly, they did. Two Worlds II is way better than its predecessor, with a deep leveling up system. Gameplay wise, it is quite good, though it could have been even better. There are also some technical issues that we will discuss later. Controls are sluggish, the combat system is awful and you'll have to grind a lot. And when we say a lot we mean... A LOT. 

Medal Of Honor PC Performance & Screenshots

After a long time, Medal Of Honor is back in action. This time though, you won't be fighting in the WW2 era. Like COD, the latest part of MOH is taking place in modern day. You take the role of various elite members in a war with the Talibans. The game uses the Unreal3 engine for its Single Player part and the Frostbite engine for the Multiplayer part. Was it a wise decision to use different engines and how do they perform? We'll use a Q9650 @ 4.2Ghz with 2GB DDR2 and a GTX295 to find out.

Let's start with the Frostbite engine. This is the same engine we've met in Bad Company 2, but as we can see it runs smoother. The major reason for this is the limited destructibility. Contrary to BC2, Medal Of Honor has a lot of buildings that are indestructible. Graphics wise, the MP part looks good but nothing breathtaking. As with Bad Company 2, the Frostbite engine is CPU bound so you'll definitely need a quadcore to enjoy it or a dualcore with a high CPU frequency. Frostbite doesn't tax the GPU, so you won't need a high-end card to enjoy it.

Front Mission Evolved PC Performance

Front Mission Evolved is the latest part of the well known mech series. Instead of a turn based game though, this time we have an action oriented title. We won't discuss if it was a wise decision or not. We'll concentrate on how well it performs and if it is a good port!


We used a Q9650 @ 3.96Ghz with 2GB DDR2 and a GTX295. Performance was good, although we expected something more. The game doesn't take full advantage of the quadcores. As we can see below, the game engine uses mainly two cores. Also, when we lowered our CPU overclock to 3.6Ghz, there were noticeable slowdowns. The above observations mean that you'll need a high CPU frequency if you want to enjoy Front Mission Evolved without frame drops.

Benchmarking and Overclocking Q9650

I'm pretty sure a lot of you are wondering if your systems are indeed CPU limited. Do you need more Ghz or is the extra cache of a new quadcore more important? So here we are with a Q9650 CPU and will overclock it to a "safe area". We will also compare it with a Q6600 (at the same speed) to see how important is the extra cache.

For starters, we used the Gigabyte EP45 UD3LR with 4GB DDR2 @1000Mhz and a GTX295. You can see our bios screens in our previous overclocking feature. The Q9650 needs lower vCore to achieve the same results we had with the Q6600. Therefore, we used 1.42V instead of 1.55V that was used for the Q6600 (and that was the limit of our Q6600). We also used 1.280V MCH Core. Everything else was at stock volts. Our system was stable 100% with these settings but you may need to tweak yours differently to achieve these speeds.

Nvidia ForceWare 260.89 Beta Released

Nvidia released today the latest beta version of ForceWare. You can download them from the links below. For testing purposes, we used the previous version of ForceWare. Our test system was a Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz with 4GB DDR2 and a GTX295. As we can see, the latest ForceWare didn't increase or decrease dramaticaly our performance, with the exception of Lost Planet 2. Nvidia seems to have tweaked the SLI profile of Lost Planet 2 and as a result of this, we got better framerates.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light PC Performance

The latest installment in the Tomb Raider series is quite different from every previous game. This time, instead of a classic third person game, we have an isometric 3D action/adventure/platform game that emphasizes a lot in looting and upgrading your beloved girl. It comes as a shock that this experimentation is among the best we've seen and shows the way Tomb Raider should had evolved. We all love the breasts of Mrs Croft but after a while, what matters is the game itself and not the boobies. And here we have a refined gameplay that isn't ruined by the problems of yesterday (regarding game and camera controls).

Codemasters F1 2010 Performance Analysis & High Resolution Screenshots

One of the most anticipated games of 2010 is definitely the F1 game from Codemasters, which was released today. As usual, it is time to test it and see how it performs. We'll use a Q6600 at 3.6Ghz, 4GB DDR2 and a GTX295. Thankfully, Nvidia has already an SLI profile so we won't have to mess around with the SLI compatibility flags.

The game takes advantage of quadcores as we can see bellow. F1 2010 is CPU bound and it really needs a high-end CPU. Even though we had our Q6600 at 3.6Ghz, our framerate was not ideal (meaning, constant 60fps) and the CPU usage was 65-80%. To truly shine, F1 2010 needs a CPU with more cache, so be grateful if you have a Q9x50 or an i5/i7. We simulated a E6600 by disabling two of our cores and performance dropped around 10-18% (5-11fps).

R.U.S.E Performance Analysis

R.U.S.E is the latest strategy game of Ubisoft. Instead of relying in the old-school gameplay mechanics, R.U.S.E follows the path of World In Conflict. This means that you won't be gathering resources and building carefully your base. Instead, you will be thrown right away to the action.

Ubisoft developed a new game engine for R.U.S.E and we have to say that we were quite impressed with it. It is multi-threaded, although it doesn't tax the CPU as you can see bellow. To try and simulate the situation with a dualcore CPU, we disabled two cores and performance was almost the same. R.U.S.E doesn't need a high-end CPU to be enjoyed.

On the other hand, the game is pretty hard on the GPU. Nvidia has an SLI profile for this game and our GTX295 was used to the fullest. We are talking about 98% GPU usage at 1600x1200 with insane details. There were some places where the framerate dove to 40fps, but the average framerate was around 54fps.

Fifa11 PC Demo, Performance & High Resolution Screenshots

EA released their demo of Fifa11 and for the first time, PC gamers have the chance to experience the next-generation gameplay and graphics of the Fifa franchise. Although the PC version is not the same as the console one (Personality is missing and the online mode supports only 5vs5 instead of 11vs11), the game is remarkable. As with PES2011, we won't discuss the gameplay but how it performs. The demo is 1.17GB and you can download it from here.

As with PES2011, we can clearly see that the new game engine of Fifa11 is multithreaded. The game takes utilizes all the cores of our Q6600, although as we can see it doesn't tax them. The overall CPU usage was 50-60%, which is exactly the same with the one of PES2011. This means that both games will run fine in most PC systems, even if they aren't high-end. This is great news to say the least.

PES 2011 PC Demo, Performance & High-Resolution Screenshots

What a great day today. Konami has just released the demo of their soccer franchise, Pro Evolution Soccer. Yes soccer fans, PES 2011 demo is finaly with us and you can download it from here. We won't discuss if it's a good game or not. After all, you can find out for yourselves. Instead we'll see how well it performs, how to enable SLI and some high resolution screenshots.

Let's get one thing straight. PES2011 is not demanding at all. In our test system (Q6600, 4GB DDR2 and a GTX295) the game was running amazingly with constant 60fps at 2048x1536. The game engine takes advantage of multicores as we can see bellow, although the overall CPU usage was around 50-60%. This clearly shows that Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 doesn't need a really high-end CPU to shine.

WRC 2010 PC Performance

It's been a while since we got a pure WRC game. Richard Burns Rally was the last great game in that category and since Codemasters literaly butchered the Colin McRae franchise, we were left with nothing. Untill now, as Black Bean is here to remind us why we all love rally games.

WRC 2010 will be released on October 8th and today we got our review code. So let's see how it performs. We'll use a Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz with 4GB DDR2 and an Nvida GTX295. The game utilizes all four cores of our quad-core, although as we can see it doesn't stress them. When using two cores, we saw better CPU utilization. Performance though was the same. So rest assured that WRC 2010 will run great if you have a dualcore.

Kane & Lynch 2 PC Performance

Few days ago, we had the chance to test the preview code of 'Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days'. The results were quite disheartening and we were really looking forward to the final version to see if IO Interactive addressed those issues. So, let's see if the final version is any better.

As always, we used a Q6600 with 4GB DDR2 RAM and a GTX295. The preview code didn't take full advantage of quadcores (or six-cores). This limitation has a huge impact to the GPU usage and the overall gaming experience, as there were some places in which our framerate dove bellow 50fps. So what about the final version? After playing the first two levels, we checked the CPU usage and saw the same thing. This game doesn't scale well with quadcores!

Lost Planet 2 Benchmark Analysis

Capcom announced that the PC version of Lost Planet 2 will be released on October 15 and to celebrate it, they released the benchmark of the game. You can download it from here. So it's time to see if Capcom optimized their engine for the PC.

We used a Q6600 (@ 3.6Ghz) with 4GB DDR2 and a GTX295 and we were clearly CPU limited, even at 1600x1200 with 16xCSAA HQ and max details in DX9. We got 75.6fps in the first scene, 71.3fps in the second and 61.4fps in the third. In all the scenes that had a lot of human characters on screen, the framerate was taking a noticeable hit. It comes as a shock, since Lost Planet 2's AI is average at best.

Overclocking the Q6600

Αν υπάρχει κάτι που δίνει άλλη πνοή στο PC gaming, αυτό είναι σίγουρα η δυνατότητα να υπερχρονίσουμε το PC μας. Το overclocking έχει γίνει πλέον αναγκαίο, αν θέλει κάποιος να χαίρεται τα παιχνίδια με όλες τις γραφικές επιλογές ενεργοποιημένες και με ένα ρευστό framerate. Μολονότι όμως τα πράγματα έχουν καταντήσει απλά στις κάρτες γραφικών, στις CPUs τα πράγματα είναι λίγο πιο πολύπλοκα.

Να ξεκαθαρίσουμε κάτι, αν θέλουμε να υπερχρονίσουμε λίγο την CPU μας, δεν υπάρχει κανένα πρόβλημα. Το 'τσίρκο' ξεκινάει όταν αναγκαζόμαστε να πειράξουμε τα ρεύματα και κάποιες άλλες επιλογές από το Bios. Μετά από αρκετές ώρες, κατάρες, μπινελίκια και όλα όσα συνοδεύουν τον υπερχρονισμό, εδώ είμαστε με έναν stable Q6600 στα 3.6Ghz με μια Gigabyte EP45-UD3LR.