Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550S: A New 65W Quad-Core

FarCry 2 Multithreaded Game Performance

FarCry 2 ships with the most impressive benchmark tool we’ve ever seen in a PC game. Part of this is due to the fact that Ubisoft actually tapped a number of hardware sites (AnandTech included) from around the world to aid in the planning for the benchmark.

For our purposes we ran the CPU benchmark included in the latest patch:

Power consumption is a bit more spread out thanks to this being more of a CPU test. The Q9550S continues to have the lowest average and peak power draw of any of the quad-core CPUs we’re looking at here today.

Energy efficiency is back to normal here as well; the test doesn’t run for a fixed time, it runs as quickly as it can. While this isn’t a realistic gaming scenario (just because you have a faster CPU it doesn’t mean you run any faster), it is useful for looking at how efficiently these CPUs handle the sort of code thrown at them by modern day game engines.

Despite the decrease in power consumption, it’s just not enough to make the Q9550S actually any more energy efficient. It’s a cooler running part, but the performance per watt ratio of the Core i7 remains untouched.