StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is a very popular DirectX 9 game that was released in 2010. Though this game uses an old version of DirectX, the number of textures that can be represented on one screen can push most of the top-end graphics cards to their limits (especially when the graphics settings are set at “ultra”). StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty uses its own physics engine that is bound to the CPU and thus does not benefit from PhysX.
We tested this game at 1680×1050, 1920×1200, and 2560×1600. The quality of the game was set to the “extreme” preset. We then used FRAPS to collect the frame rate of a replay on the “Unit Testing” custom map. We used a battle between very large armies to stress the video cards.
Today Cooler Master is releasing the newest model in their Cosmos full-tower case line-up, the Cosmos II. Let’s take a look at this huge case that comes with 10 expansion slots and a hefty price tag.
Arctic Cooling Fusion 550RF is a 500 W continuous / 550 W peak power supply with an external 80-mm fluid dynamic bearing fan. Let’s see if this unit survives our tests.
Let’s compare the performance of two competing CPUs that are being released this week, the Intel Core i5-2500K (3.3 GHz) and the AMD Phenom II X4 975 BE (3.6 GHz).