Section IV Performance – Gaming
Gaming as a test of motherboard performance is sort of a joke these days. The big player in the gaming arena is the GPU. Everyone but a few hardcore PR teams know this. However, it is important to run at least a few (one from each current DX version) to see if there are any issues with the combination of components on a motherboard. These are items like Audio lag, memory lag and of course problems with the PCIe lanes and signal traces. If there are issues in design, drivers or BIOS then you can have odd gaming performance. So without much more preamble let’s dive into the three games we currently use; Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 for DX9 FarCry 2 for DX10 and Battlefield Bad Company 2 for DX11.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 DX9 -
This is an excellent but short game that put you right into the action from the beginning and does not let up the pressure until the very end. The graphics are a little better; most notably the night and thermal imaging have been improved. The AI is still the typical COD “bar fight” style AI, with maybe a tad more finesse. All in all it is not a bad game to play and a decent one to use for testing. Our testing run starts at the bridge and ends after you clear the school in the first level of the game. Settings are shown below as are the performance numbers.

Now some of you might be wondering why we are continuing to use an older game like Modern Warfare 2 in our testing. Well it is pretty simple; Modern Warfare 2 is still played regularly by a large group of people. Our DX9 game choice was made to include a popular game and MW2 was a great choice.

As you can see though most of the test systems we have thrown it at are capable of running MW2 at over 90 FPS minimum. This means it is time for a change. We will be moving our DX9 game choice to Modern Warfare 3 shortly. As for how the MIVE does, well it manages to pull off 99FPS minimum which puts it in third place according to the rankings. Unfortunately,… at these speeds you would never notice a 5FPS difference even if they were side by side.

FarCry2 DX10 -
Although not one of my favorite games this tedious game does have some good graphics. The large sandbox style of the game lends to mission based play. The only problem is that the AI is rather low grade. Still the more CPU power the more the bad guys try to do. Over all the game was a little bit of a disappointment to play, but still not a bad DX10 representation. Our testing run starts right after you get your first mission to clean out the safe-house and ends after the hostage rescue. Settings and performance numbers are shown below.

Our DX10 gaming choice is also getting a little dated although it still can be hard on a system (and look at how long people used Crysis as a test) Here we find the MIVE at the top of the heap. Again the 5FPS difference is not something that you would be able to detect.  You might pick it up if you were using V-Sync or if you wanted to run nVidia 3D Vision, but for regular gaming it would not make a difference in the way it looked on the screen. During our overclocking tests the MIVE dropped a few FPS and ended up back in third place.

Battlefield Bad Company2 DX11 –
I have liked many of the Battlefield games. They usually tend to be fast paced and fun. With Battlefield Bad Company 2 you do get some of that, but there is something about the graphics and the movement that just does not sit right. The AI is a less sophisticated form of the bar fight AI, but it gets the job done. Still, the game is good for testing as it can put a strain on the components of the board. Out testing run is the entire first level, from beginning to end. Settings are shown below along with the raw numbers.

Even under Bad Company 2 the MIVE gives solid gaming performance. With just over 60FPS minimum you are going to have very smooth game play here. Once again when we OC the CPU we lose a couple of FPS, but not so much that it would affect game play.

Gaming wrap-up -
High-performance gaming is (well it has been) much more about the GPU in terms of frame rate. However, there is more to gaming than just frame rate. We have had test systems that can give solid frame rates, but when you combine audio, level load times, and networking performance you ended up having a much lower quality gaming experience. This was not the case on the MIVE. We had quick level load times, good audio (although not great), and of course the network game play was speedy thanks to the dual Intel LAN controllers. You might not get the highest frame rates out, but the overall experience with the MIVE is going to be solid in terms of PC gaming.