Intel Core i7 "Nehalem" 920, 940 & 965 XE Processor Review

Supreme Commander

Supreme Commander v1.1.3280
Graphic Settings: High
Resolution: 1280X1024
Anti Aliasing: 0
Fidelity Presets: High (All)

Test 1: Custom Bench Replay
Comparison: Time Comparison. Timed till completion of replay at 10X speed.

While not frequently found in many mainstream hardware reviews, we felt it beneficial to bring the unique style of Supreme Commander to our benchmark suite. Upon release, SupCom was heralded for packing an extreme punch when it came to CPU requirements, so much so, that many people recommended not even running it without a dual core CPU. The Moho Engine, developed by Gas Powered Games is unique in the fact that it was one of the first and continues to be one of the few that is designed with true out of the box multi threading capabilities. This allows the game to divide up tasks such as AI Calculations, Rendering, Sound, Drivers and others to separate CPU cores, resulting in far better utilization of multi-core system and a more accurate assessment of CPU performance for multi threaded gaming.

The test we designed takes a large scale 8 player map with 7 AI and records a 20 minute demo. This replay is then sped up to the maximum playback speed (10x realtime) and timed until completion. The significance of running the test in this fashion, rather than the traditional method of an FPS comparison is that the CPU is so heavily utilized as armies grow that the gameplay itself is forced to decrease, and at times may eventually lead to play slower real time. Take note of the CPU's that complete the replay with faster times, these will generally allow the game to last longer at an acceptable speed rather than finding yourself waiting many more real seconds for every second of game operation.


Although it is multi-threaded, Supreme Commander can only form 4 threads. As a result, the Core i7's hyper-threading capabilities go unutilize in this benchmark. Nevertheless, the i7-965 posts a respectable 7% performance improvement over the identically-clocked QX9770.

Unreal Tournament 3

Unreal Tournament 3 v1.2
Graphic Settings: Low
Resolution: 1024X768
Visual Settings: Texture Detail: 1/5 - Level Detail 1/5

Test 1: UT3 Benchmark DM-Shangrila Bot Match (200 Seconds)
Bots: 32
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

The latest in the Epic saga, Unreal Tournament 3 is the beginning of a whole new breed of games. Using the redeveloped Unreal Engine 3, the game uses numerous advanced rendering techniques and physics processing effects not to mention a whole slew of new visual developments. As you can imagine, that makes it a worthy candidate for CPU comparison and allows some of the latest processors to showoff their readiness for the games of tomorrow.


The Core i7 processors once again performs quite well, but the QX9770 is able to squeak by and take a 2% lead. This is well within the margin of error between runs, and it is fair to state that both Nehalem and Penryn perform equally in Unreal Tournament 3.