Clarkdale Graphics benchmarks

Because we’re a site that’s focused towards the middle and high-end gaming crowd, we knew from the outset that we wanted to focus on the Core i5-661’s performance as a potential replacement for the Core 2 Duo E8500 (which it’s priced similarly to), rather than its integrated 3D graphics performance.

We know that the majority of our readers are going to want to know which is faster: the E8500 or the Core i5-661, both paired with a discrete graphics card like the Radeon 4890 or GeForce GTX 275, but we still wanted to see how the Core i5-661’s integrated graphics performed with a few of today’s latest games. Let’s have a look shall we?

Crysis

Far Cry 2

Resident Evil 5

As you can see, Clarkdale just doesn’t have the shading power or the memory subsystem to handle today’s latest games at high resolutions or with moderate graphics settings. The CPU was able to deliver playable frame rates with Resident Evil 5, but we wouldn’t exactly call the experience memorable. Crysis was a complete slideshow.

At the same time though, we’re happy to report that the games actually worked flawlessly. Intel’s had problems displaying some high-end games in the past but fortunately we didn’t spot any graphical glitches or artifacts when running Clarkdale’s IGP. Hopefully Intel will be able to keep their graphics driver up to date as new 3D titles are released over the course of this year.