Intel Processor Results

A Range at 3.2 GHz

Notes

Here’s where we would expect to see the greatest impact of this 1.0.5 patch. The results certainly aren’t disappointing either. At 800x600, all three of the Intel chips realize gains which are nothing short of amazing. I mean, a 69 percent real-world gain on the dual-core chips? Who has ever heard of such a thing? The Hyper-Threaded Pentium 4 540 is even able to post scores 18 percent faster than pre-patch.

The numbers shrink as you move to 1280x1024 with 4x anti-aliasing, but that’s to be expected when graphics horsepower starts becoming the scarce resource. Even still, both dual-core chips pick up close to 40 percent higher frame rates. Hyper-Threading gives the Pentium 4 540 an extra 20 percent boost.

The party starts dwindling at 1600x1200. Consider that’s with 6xAA and 16xAF, though! Intel’s Pentium Extreme Edition is still able to snag nearly nine percent higher frame rates, too.

Note that there’s very little difference between the Pentium Extreme Edition and Pentium D 840, suggesting that the game is optimized for two concurrent threads. Two physical cores gives you the best performance here, as expected, and Hyper-Threading alone actually is capable of buying plenty of speed.