Intel Core i7-950 Review

3D Mark Vantage

Performance

As always once you move to gaming tests, the GPU plays a far more important role than many people realise. If you’re after a pure gaming experience it’s really all about the GPU.

At the low resolutions of the Performance setting our results pretty much follow the power of the CPU, such is the tiny load put on the graphics card.

Extreme

Once the resolution is cranked up and the anti-aliasing applied, things become much closer. In fact the difference in 3D Mark X score between the two chips and four clock-speeds is negligible. The 3 GHz i7-950 performs just as well as when it’s overclocked to 4.4GHz.

Crysis Warhead

The reliability of Crysis Warhead is in its ability to decimate any system put in front of it. At these heavy settings we’d expect a result akin to that of 3D Mark at Extreme and, with variances for gameplay differences taken into account, it pretty much is.

Metro 2033

As time moves on, newer games are beating the heck out of our rigs and Metro 2033 definitely falls into that catergory. It’s absolutely brutal even on our 4.4GHz i7-950, with it just about being playable when things calm down on screen.