Gaming and 3D performance

Far Cry 2

Featuring fantastic visuals courtesy of the Dunia Engine, this game also features one of the most impressive benchmark tools we have seen in a PC game. For single GPU results we set the performance feature set to Very High, graphics to High, and enable DX10 with 2xAA.

Gaming Performance - Far Cry 2 - i5 661 CPU @ Stock


Gaming Performance - Far Cry 2 - i5 661 CPU @ 4GHz



Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II

We are big fans of the Warhammer franchise, especially Dawn of War II. One of the latest RTS games in our library is also one of the more demanding titles on both the CPU and GPU. We crank all options to Ultra, enable AA, and then run the built-in performance benchmark for our result.

Gaming Performance - Dawn Of War II - i5 661 CPU @ Stock



Gaming Performance - Dawn Of War II - i5 661 CPU @ 4GHz


The DH57JG certainly keeps up with the pack in gaming performance.


AutoCAD 2010 x64—Cadalyst 2008

We utilize AutoCAD 2010 x64 and the Cadalyst Labs 5 benchmark.

Application Performance - AutoCAD 2010 x64 - i5 661 CPU @ Stock


The Cadalyst benchmark seems to be a great all round test of 3D performance mingled with fast hard drive access. We've seen a lot of variance in this benchmark from board to board using the same chipset - the DH57JG turns in a rather average score of 817.

Test Setup and Power System Benchmarks
Comments Locked

34 Comments

View All Comments

  • hansblix - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link

    Agreed. I think I'm on the Mini-ITX bandwagon now. A tiny, quiet, efficient yet reasonably powerful gaming system would be a fun project.
  • MadMan007 - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link

    I think it would be neat if Intel came out with an 'extreme' m-ITX motherboard although they might have to omit the glowing skull. More robust components and options for overclocking might make it a superior choice to other mITX motherboard for SFF enthusiasts. It's nice that Intel at least properly implements VRM cyrrent protection, it is rather sad that there were many insteances of blown VRMs on some P55 boards.
  • MadMan007 - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link

    You guys need to check that spec chart and take a look at the actual mobo. I only see 4 internal SATA and one eSATA, no coax S/PDIF on the I/O panel (a two-pin header is mentioned separately)
  • Rajinder Gill - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link

    Sorry, I've updated the table...
  • JonnyDough - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link

    Any nice ITX gaming build articles coming out any time Raj? I'd like to see what awesome/cheap kind of tiny LAN party box I can get with a nice single slot card to run modern FPS. Do it under $1K for sure if possible.

    i.e. (possibly?)

    XFX single slot 5670

    Any solid, non-OCable ITX board is fine as long as it is good value and has good location of PCI-E x16 slot etc. (USB 3.0 if/when possible and either Intel or AMD is fine)

    4GB of ram (8GB if possible on two slots provided you find an excellent value ram set on the cheap)

    Case, preferrably black with solid PSU (or even better if you can fit a full modular one in with proper capabilities)

    Periphrals not required in the build, but it would be nice to see the OS added into the system, as Windows is required for LAN parties. Nobody hosts Linux gaming parties around here that I'm aware of.

    Might also make mention of a solid gigabyte switch like the 8port Rosewill one listed on Newegg for $29 (currently), and the free games available like EA's recent free release of a good portion of the C&C franchise series.

    Let's get gaming!
  • Rajinder Gill - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link

    Hi JD,

    I'll pass on the request, I think we should have someone to cover cases and the like onboard soon.

    regards
    Raja
  • Murst - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link

    I'm currently looking for a Micro ITX case to replace my Atom board in an Acer Easystore. I really like how the Easystore looks and how easy it is to add/remove drives, but the Atom isn't capable of handling software like PlayOn, and I want to use the EasyStore for streaming to my PS3.

    This board would be a pretty good fit (6 SATA is great- I only need 4, but a lot of mini ITX don't even have 4). However, what I don't want is a power hungy processor, and even the i3 is a 73W, which seems rather high.

    Hopefully Intel will come out with some lower power 1156 processors. Either that, or a Mini ITX board comes out with support for the mobile i3/i5/i7 processors. Actually, I really don't understand why no one sells mini ITX w/ mobile processor sockets. That would be ideal for really small HTPC or Home Server setups.
  • strikeback03 - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link

    There were mini-ITX boards for previous generation mobile processors (though they were expensive), I imagine there will be for current generation ones as well at some point.
  • deruberhanyok - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link

    Murst,

    You might want to check out SPCR's i5-661 article. Thought the i3 processors are given a 73W rating, actual power draw is much lower than that.

    In their tests, playback of an h264 blu-ray disc showed power use of 43W DC. Full system with CPU and GPU at load didn't even hit 70W. And that's with the i5-661, which would draw more power than a regular i3 due to its increased CPU and GPU clock:

    http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1013-page4.ht...">http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1013-page4.ht...
    http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1013-page5.ht...">http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1013-page5.ht...

    They are already lower power than advertised. I think the i3 series could have been listed as 60W or even lower and still have had plenty of headroom in the power rating.

    This is, incidentally, one of the reasons I made the suggestion of testing in a more realistic system configuration than the test setup used here.
  • MadMan007 - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link

    TDP doesn't mean power draw and was enver meant to imply power draw anyway so they aren't 'rated' to draw that much power in the first place. (Sorry, it's just one of my pet peeves when people equate TDP to power draw.)

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now