Lost Planet 2 is a game that uses a lot of DirectX 11 features, like tessellation (to round out the edges of polygonal models), displacement maps (added to the tessellated mesh to add fine grain details), DirectCompute soft body simulation (to introduce more realism in the “boss” monsters), and DirectCompute wave simulation (to introduce more realism in the physics calculations in water surfaces; when you move or when gunshots and explosions hit the water, it moves accordingly). We reviewed the video cards using Lost Planet 2 internal benchmarking features, choosing the “Benchmark A” (we know that “Benchmark B” is the one recommended for reviewing video cards, however, at least with us, results were inconsistent). We set graphics at “high,” anti-aliasing at “4x” and DX11 at “full.” The results below are the number of frames per second generated by each video card.
We added five new thermal compounds to our previous roundup, for a total of 30 different thermal compounds from major brands. We also tried another “alternative” compound: toothpaste.
Our review of the most high-end CPU from AMD today, Athlon 64 FX-62, a dual-core CPU running at 2.8 GHz with two 1 MB L2 memory caches and based on the new AM2 socket, supporting DDR2 memories.