Core i5-2500K vs. Phenom II X4 975 BE CPU Review

Call of Duty 4

Call of Duty 4 is a DirectX 9 game implementing high-dynamic range (HDR) and its own physics engine. We ran this game at 1440×900 with all image quality settings at their minimum values (no anti-aliasing and no anisotropic filtering). We used the game internal benchmarking feature, running a demo provided by nVidia called wetwork. We are putting this demo for downloading here if you want to run your own benchmarking. The game was updated to version 1.7. We ran this test five times, discarding the lowest and the highest scores. The results below are an arithmetic average of the three remaining values, given in frames per second (FPS).

We ran this game twice with each CPU. First, we used the CPU or chipset integrated graphics. Then we added a GeForce GT 430 video card, which is an entry-level DirectX 11 video card. We used an entry-level video card because we wanted to see the impact each CPU had in the performance achieved (when using high-end video cards, the CPU role in gaming performance is reduced).

Let’s compare the results of the CPU and chipset integrated graphics first. The integrated graphics processor of the Core i5-2500K (3.30 GHz) proved to be 65% faster than the one embedded in the Core i5-661 (3.33 GHz), 82-84% faster than the one used  in the AMD 880G chipset. In fact, lowering all image quality settings we finally have a playable frame rate on Call of Duty 4.

When we installed a GeForce GT 430, the Core i5-2500K (3.30 GHz) and the Phenom II X4 975 (3.6 GHz) achieved the same performance level, with the Core i5-2500K being 8% faster than the Phenom II X4 970 (3.5 GHz) and 12% faster than the Core i5-661 (3.33 GHz).