Fallout New Vegas Gameplay

I have been playing Fallout New Vegas on my rebuilt system and found no lag at 1080p Ultra High settings.  I installed Fraps to get an idea of my frame-rate versus the laptop (2.4Ghz Dual-core with 6GB of RAM without discrete graphics) that I was using before.

I was averaging about 20 FPS on the laptop on Low settings at 720p.  With the new system, I am averaging around 60 FPS during gameplay and noticed a few times that it dipped to 20 FPS for a very short time.

Overall though, the game is much more playable.  I realize that this is an older game, I may try to get results from demos of newer games to get some better (or current) benchmarks on the A8-5600K APU.

New vs Old Components

Those of you that have been reading this blog know that I recently replaced the motherboard, 2.8Ghz Dual-core Pentium, and 2GB of DDR2 RAM in my old Gateway GT5404 with an MSI FM2-A75MA-E35 board, 3.6Ghz Quad-core AMD A8-5600K APU, and 8GB of G.Skill Sniper DDR3 1866 RAM.

I had run Cinebench and the Window Experience ratings on the system before and after the upgrade.

For Cinebench the old CPU score 0.79 and OpenGL would not even run.

The Windows Experience had the following scores:

Processor                   4.6
RAM                          5.3
Graphics                     3.3
Gaming Graphics         3.3
Primary Hard Disk      5.9

The new system shows 2.44 for the CPU on Cinebench and 33.46fps on the OpenGL test.

The Windows Experience scores for the new components were:

Processor                   7.2
RAM                          7.3
Graphics                     6.8
Gaming Graphics         6.8
Primary Hard Disk      5.9

I am not surprised that there was no chance with the drive, as I am temporarily continuing to use the hard-drive from the original system configuration.

I am in the process of porting my lone Steam title (Fallout New Vegas) from the laptop to see how it runs on the new configuration.  So far, I am pretty impressed with the speed that the system is showing to have at this time.  I know that the numbers above will not compete with a lot of systems, but I was trying to build this on a budget and for what I spent, I am pretty happy with the results so far.

New PC is Built

This is an update on the progress of my personal rig.

I was able to get the new parts put into the old Gateway GT5404 case that I talked about in previous posts and in my YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieZY7QLgAuo).

I am working on getting all of the drivers and BIOS updates installed before comparing benchmark numbers from Cinebench and the Windows Experience to the old configuration of the system.  I have successfully installed Windows 7 64-bit on the system and believe my only bottleneck at this time would be the HDD, which I will be replacing in the future with a Solid State Drive.

I am trying to think of different things that I may want to try to do with this computer in the future, including running AMD Dual Graphics or a water-cooling solution.  But I think those will be determined by the final choice of case I make.

Vishera Getting a Second Look

When AMD's Vishera platform was first released, the benchmark tests were fairy underwhelming for a 4.0Ghz 8-core processor (FX-8350) when it was put head-to-head with Intel's best bang for the buck 3.5Ghz quad-core (i5-3570K).

This seems to be swaying toward the favor of AMD now that the new BIOS updates and Windows CPU scheduling hot-fixes are available.  Starting with some gaming benchmark tests with overclocking that were done by Tek Syndicate that showed the Vishera beating the i5-3570K and in cases the i7-3770K, especially when streaming.

FX-8350 vs i5-3570K vs i7-3770k vs i7-3820 with AMD Radeon HD 7870 Benchmarks:
http://teksyndicate.com/videos/amd-fx-8350-vs-intel-3570k-vs-3770k-vs-3820-gaming-and-xsplit-streaming-benchmarks

i5-3570K vs FX-8350 with GTX 670 Benchmarks:
http://teksyndicate.com/videos/amd-fx-8350-oc-vs-i5-3570k-oc-battle-continues

New AMD Processor

The AMD FX-8150 (Bulldozer) 3.6Ghz and AMD FX-8350 4Ghz (Vishera) were put up against the Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4Ghz.

While the new Vishera based processor performed well in benchmark testing, it simply fell short to the Core i5 in nearly all categories.  In the categories that it actually outperformed the Intel, there was only very little variation.

For more information on the benchmarking tests and the systems used, please visit Maximum PC magazine:
Maximum PC Vishera Review