Gaming Performance
As usual, gaming performance was tested with a variety of current games. We ran benchmarks at a 1024x768 resolution. Any more than this resulted in completely unplayable game conditions, although we did find several older non-FPS games such as the Civilization series, Railroad Tycoon 3, Rollercoaster Tycoon series, and others played acceptability at 1280x1024 with the quality settings at normal. We concentrated on Direct X games as OpenGL support under Vista is bad at this time.
Battlefield 2
This benchmark is performed using DICE's built-in demo playback functionality with additional capture capabilities designed in house. During the benchmark, the camera switches between players and vehicles in order to capture the most action possible. There is a significant amount of smoke, explosions, and vehicle usage as this a very GPU intensive Battlefield 2 benchmark. We run Battlefield 2 using medium quality graphics settings available in the video settings. The game itself is best experienced with average in-game frame rates of 35 and up.
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
We use the built-in timedemo feature to benchmark the game. Our timedemo consists of starting at the bottom of the hill near the lake and ending in the old church. The Source engine timedemo feature is similar to the nettimedemo of Id's Doom 3 engine, in that it plays back more than just the graphics. The visual quality settings were set to high or medium where possible with HDR off. While the Source engine is notorious for giving great frame rates for almost any hardware setup, we find the game isn't as enjoyable if it isn't running at 35fps or above.
Company of Heroes
Company of Heroes was recently released and is proving to be a very addictive RTS game around the office. This game is very GPU intensive and also requires a hefty CPU at times. The game contains a built-in performance test that utilizes the game engine to generate several different action scenes along with a coffee argument as a sideline distraction before the war starts. We found the performance test gives a good indication of how well your system will perform throughout the game on average. Some of the in-game action sequences are more demanding than the performance test, but we generally found the game to be enjoyable with an average performance test frame rate above 30fps.
Sims 2
Sims 2 was released over two years ago and is constantly being updated with best selling expansion packs. In testing with the various expansion packs we did not notice any measurable differences in performance so our benchmark will be reflective of game play using the base game title. This particular game requires a decent CPU and very good GPU when utilizing the antialiasing, shadow, or high quality texture options.
We utilize FRAPS to capture the results from our replay file. Our benchmark consists of a three character scenario that takes approximately twenty minutes to set up and cycle through a series of daily events. The camera movements are varied as is the movement so we feel like this benchmark represents the typical game. We set most video options to high but disable shadows. We generally found the game to be enjoyable with an average frame rate above 30fps.
Gaming Summary
What else can you really say after reviewing the results? They are generally pathetic from a gaming perspective but the 690G obviously has some potential left in it at the lower resolutions. The 6150 performs okay considering the age of its core and we will see the new 6150SE and older 6100 chipset performing a few percent better overall but not enough to catch the 690G.
Considering the G965 was launched last fall and promised to bring about a difference in on-board video performance, we are still not seeing the results live up to the hype. The G965 was incapable of running Battlefield 2 at all and Half-Life 2 was an interesting slide show that allowed you to see every detail of the benchmark session in an excruciatingly slow way that would make a visit to the dentist for a root canal seem pleasant. However, G965 was able to generate decent results (for this grouping) in Company of Heroes and Sims 2, though the minimum frame rates in Sims 2 would bring the game to a slow crawl at times. Image quality generally favored the 690G in the majority of games we tried but the NVIDIA 6150 was close in most titles. The G965 had acceptable image quality but we could tell certain details were not as sharp or even evident when compared to the competing AM2 solutions.
As usual, gaming performance was tested with a variety of current games. We ran benchmarks at a 1024x768 resolution. Any more than this resulted in completely unplayable game conditions, although we did find several older non-FPS games such as the Civilization series, Railroad Tycoon 3, Rollercoaster Tycoon series, and others played acceptability at 1280x1024 with the quality settings at normal. We concentrated on Direct X games as OpenGL support under Vista is bad at this time.
Battlefield 2
This benchmark is performed using DICE's built-in demo playback functionality with additional capture capabilities designed in house. During the benchmark, the camera switches between players and vehicles in order to capture the most action possible. There is a significant amount of smoke, explosions, and vehicle usage as this a very GPU intensive Battlefield 2 benchmark. We run Battlefield 2 using medium quality graphics settings available in the video settings. The game itself is best experienced with average in-game frame rates of 35 and up.
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
We use the built-in timedemo feature to benchmark the game. Our timedemo consists of starting at the bottom of the hill near the lake and ending in the old church. The Source engine timedemo feature is similar to the nettimedemo of Id's Doom 3 engine, in that it plays back more than just the graphics. The visual quality settings were set to high or medium where possible with HDR off. While the Source engine is notorious for giving great frame rates for almost any hardware setup, we find the game isn't as enjoyable if it isn't running at 35fps or above.
Company of Heroes
Company of Heroes was recently released and is proving to be a very addictive RTS game around the office. This game is very GPU intensive and also requires a hefty CPU at times. The game contains a built-in performance test that utilizes the game engine to generate several different action scenes along with a coffee argument as a sideline distraction before the war starts. We found the performance test gives a good indication of how well your system will perform throughout the game on average. Some of the in-game action sequences are more demanding than the performance test, but we generally found the game to be enjoyable with an average performance test frame rate above 30fps.
Sims 2
Sims 2 was released over two years ago and is constantly being updated with best selling expansion packs. In testing with the various expansion packs we did not notice any measurable differences in performance so our benchmark will be reflective of game play using the base game title. This particular game requires a decent CPU and very good GPU when utilizing the antialiasing, shadow, or high quality texture options.
We utilize FRAPS to capture the results from our replay file. Our benchmark consists of a three character scenario that takes approximately twenty minutes to set up and cycle through a series of daily events. The camera movements are varied as is the movement so we feel like this benchmark represents the typical game. We set most video options to high but disable shadows. We generally found the game to be enjoyable with an average frame rate above 30fps.
Gaming Summary
What else can you really say after reviewing the results? They are generally pathetic from a gaming perspective but the 690G obviously has some potential left in it at the lower resolutions. The 6150 performs okay considering the age of its core and we will see the new 6150SE and older 6100 chipset performing a few percent better overall but not enough to catch the 690G.
Considering the G965 was launched last fall and promised to bring about a difference in on-board video performance, we are still not seeing the results live up to the hype. The G965 was incapable of running Battlefield 2 at all and Half-Life 2 was an interesting slide show that allowed you to see every detail of the benchmark session in an excruciatingly slow way that would make a visit to the dentist for a root canal seem pleasant. However, G965 was able to generate decent results (for this grouping) in Company of Heroes and Sims 2, though the minimum frame rates in Sims 2 would bring the game to a slow crawl at times. Image quality generally favored the 690G in the majority of games we tried but the NVIDIA 6150 was close in most titles. The G965 had acceptable image quality but we could tell certain details were not as sharp or even evident when compared to the competing AM2 solutions.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
70 Comments
View All Comments
JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 6, 2007 - link
What's worse is that the G965 scores almost twice as high in 3DMark06... and then falls flat on its face in actual gaming tests. (Well, most of them anyway.)IntelUser2000 - Wednesday, March 14, 2007 - link
I think it might be combination of Vista too. Half Life 2 can score ~20 fps with G965 at the same settings AT tested at, when using Windows XP. I would also like to see how it performs it in XP. It seems G965 suffers more from Vista then other IGP.
chucky2 - Tuesday, March 6, 2007 - link
I think it would be good insurance, given how amazingly late 690G is, to please confirm with AMD that 690G motherboards will definitly support the AM2+ CPU's this late summer/fall.And before people remind me that this is already fact, we have not to my knowledge see AMD themselves confirm this...which for something so seemingly simple to confirm, is getting distrubingly telling.
When AnandTech updates their article and says that they've gone back and confirmed with AMD that all 690G boards being release with support AM2+, or AMD themselves says it, then we'll know for sure. Until then, it's rumor...
Chuck
JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 6, 2007 - link
AMD has not officially stated whether the Agena/Kuma will be drop-in compatible with current AM2 chipsets (or even the AM2 socket). We'd certainly love to know, but we're still waiting along with everyone else.chucky2 - Tuesday, March 6, 2007 - link
Do they have any idea, and have you specifically put the question to them? I'm sure you have contacts at AMD......because from what I can tell, if a discrete graphics card is used, this chipset is looking like when Dr. Evil says, 1 million dollars! ...and then everyone is like, Uh, big deal...
...this thing should have released in Sept. of last year, and then become the defacto AMD chipset, not be released now - as you point out - with MCP68 right around the corner and the G35 coming also.
This chipset really looks to me like a could have been. Good work ATI (and then AMD)!!!
Chuck
Gary Key - Tuesday, March 6, 2007 - link
We asked the question Chuck, have not received an official answer yet. While backwards compatibility has always been discussed as possible by AMD, we are still not convinced with any of the current motherboards. One only has to look at the Conroe launch last year and realize that while the chipsets were compatible, the motherboards were not without an update. We just recently saw this again with Kentsfield. We wish this chipset would have been released last fall also. ;)chucky2 - Tuesday, March 6, 2007 - link
Thanks Guys, that's about all I can ask for.I guess now I've got to really sit down and decide what's the best course of action for my godson and also cousins builds. Their both going to be budget builds, but I don't want to build them an AM2 system and basically have it be End Of Lifed in 3-4 months.
You'd think if AMD wanted to stop the hemmoraging their seeing on the enthusiast side, they'd make a statement about AM2+ compatibility now, rather than wait and just keep loosing more and more. Not that a lot won't go over to the Intel side, but still, tell me 690G and say MCP68 will be the only AM2 chipsets that can take AM2+ CPU's, and now at least I've got a comfortable long term upgrade path.
Leave me in doubt, I mine as well get a 1333FSB Intel board and go to the dark side...
Looking forward to that mATX review...you think it'll be out this time next week, or towards Friday?
Chuck
JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 6, 2007 - link
Honestly, the fact that AMD hasn't come out and said the next gen CPUs will work in AM2 speaks volumes in my book. Perhaps they are just trying to keep things quiet so that a bunch of people won't complain that their particular board won't run the new processors (some 939 boards wouldn't work with X2, after all, and there were some complaints saying AMD "guaranteed backwards compatibility). Hopefully that's all it is, but I am seriously concerned that Kuma and Agena will not work in the vast majority of AM2 boards - that's assuming they'll work in any at all.If AMD doesn't support older boards with the new processors, they are going to need some really impressive performance to keep people from raising Cain. As it stands, if a reasonably fast X2 5200+ or so isn't good enough for your long-term needs, I certainly wouldn't purchase a new AM2 system with the hope of an upgrade until the truth comes out.
Final thought: The Quad FX platform has clearly been stated as being forwards compatible with native quad core Barcelona chips. If AMD is willing to make that commitment, why not make a similar commitment with AM2 and Agena/Kuma?
dmce - Tuesday, March 6, 2007 - link
Are we going to see some details regarding HD (1080P) playback and whether it can do it comfortable or not. I appreciate you made a small comment about it, but this was lifted from the original look at the 690G chipset a few days ago so no real update in this review. Im just puzzled no sites are taking a closer look at this considering its surely one of, if not the whole point of HDMI being there?Im not interested at all in using this for games, i want a 1080p capable machine.
PokerGuy - Wednesday, March 7, 2007 - link
I'm considering a board based on the 690G for my new HTPC, but now I see it won't be able to output 1080P? Yipes... even the lowly 6150 can output at 1080P, correct?Games are not important with regard to this board, but if it can't output at 1080p, what use would it be in a HTPC??
Also, any ETA on when the mATX roundup will be released?