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.

The P9X79 Deluxe does well on our DX9 game Modern Warfare 2, but then again even the slowest board in our testing group has a minimum frame rate of 76. This means that unless you turn on V-sync or use 3D Vision these boards are all going to look the same during game play.

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.


The P9X79 Deluxe comes in third for stock gaming and overclocked gaming using FarCry2.Once again we have to wonder about how much of a difference you would see though. After all the delta between the P9X79 and the Intel X79SI is only 2 FPS.

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.

For Bad Company 2 the P9X79 holds its own again but is not at the top hill. Still the performance in our DX1 game test is good enough that we are not worried about the gaming experience on this board.

Gaming wrap-up -
The gaming performance on the P9X79 Deluxe was very solid in terms of frame rate. We also had no issues playing the online versions of each game and while the audio was acceptable we do think that some of the extra processing that is happening at the CPU level could be impacting performance. This is not a huge performance hit, it is around 1-2 FPS on average, but we are fairly certain that this is the cause of the lower frame rates during our gaming tests. Still as we have said more than once, ,the frame rates are so close you would honestly never know the difference.