I was originally going to decide on some sort of Blu-Ray disc drive for my 2600K machine, until I realized that I have barely even needed to use one thus far.

Don’t get me wrong, if someone ever needs it for watching movies, audio discs, or reading legacy data discs (etc.), it makes perfect sense. As I’m almost exclusively playing games or video capturing on this system, I have pretty much resorted to just SSDs, thumb-drives, external hard drives, only very occasionally hooking up a USB 2.0-based slim DVD reader/writer for the occasional audio CD rip. Maybe I’m also a bit concerned with ruining the air flow in my case by stuffing too many drives and hook-ups in it, but then I also don’t have a very fitting case for my i7 board, so there is that!

As for running Crysis 2 benchmark, it's a big problem.

OpenAutomate UI Tool from nvidia is gone, although it can be downloaded from webarchive. It doesn't seem to be compatible with version 1.9 though.

Then we have instructions on https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/960489-c … ysis-2/58578630 which don't work. There is no AutoTestTimeDemo.cfg in the game.

The last option is "Adrenaline Crysis 2 Benchmark Tool", the last version is 1.0.1.14 BETA. But this version is gone, not available even in Webarchive. Fortunately, https://www.3dfxzone.it has an older version 1.0.1.9 beta , get it from https://www.3dfxzone.it/download/?object=html&objid=9352 .

Attached Adrenaline benchmark with maximum details possible. 1600x1200 is equivalent to 1920x1080. In benchmark it looks good, we get 100+ average fps. In the first campaign mission, when we get outside for the first time overseeing New York, fps drops to just 37 if v-sync is enabled and 65 fps if v-sync is disabled. It seems v-sync causes major performance drop in this game.

limemyth, please run it on Intel Core i7-3770K + GTX 680. I would expect it to demolish the Phenom II + GTX 780. Dipshidian can run it on GTX 580. 1.9 patch, DX11, HD textures are needed.

This might be the time to downgrade to Windows 7 then, since I've been too lazy to do that up until now, hah!
Haven't been doing any serious benchmarking on the 2600K, but if I'm going to attempt it I might as well get it done right.

I have decided to benchmark Crysis 2 in Windows 10 for starters, then I might run the tests again after I've gotten Win7 going. The results mostly speak for themselves: 17-18fps minimum, 56-64fps on average! See attached images for more details.

Sorry that I couldn't use 1600x1200. My current monitor doesn't go any higher. I really need to get myself at least a 2K one really soon!

I don't know how the Phenom II X4 965 is supposed to fare against Sandy Bridge, but the minimum frame-rate seems to reflect a slightly higher CPU performance on this machine. I didn't do anything with the processor clocks, so it's not exactly a big difference. Like Crysis 1, though, I'm betting it's hitting the GPU harder most of the time.

The reason why the average frame-rate looks as OK as it does stems mostly from how the benchmarks where recorded; a lot of looking at walls, floors and somewhat less busy scenes. Accordingly, on much faster GPUs, the current frame-rate increases substantially whenever any floor-/wall-/sky-gazing is going on. The real-world performance is definitely closer to the 30s or 40s in busier scenes on the GTX 580, at least from what I remember when I last played through a chunk of the campaign.

You can interpolate your score to 1600x1200 by multiplying it by 0.92 based on pixel count.

Not sure if the recorded minimums have any value, absolute recorded minimums are a useless metric, only bottom ~5% is useful. Both Intel Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge are vastly superior to AMD Phenom II, which is 2009 technology (on inferior Global Foundries node). Intel can do much better with a good GPU. The huge difference in average FPS is simply due to much stronger GPU.

To get a better idea you can play the 1st mission in the campaign for about 5 minutes until you open the door that leads to outside. Look around without going down. Play without v-sync as it affects fps too much. Phenom II X4 3.4Ghz reaches about 65-70fps in that scene where you overlook New York vegetation, Statue of Liberty with about 75% GPU utilization. It is a very tough scene in the game. The Adrenaline benchmark is much easier on the system than this scene.

Crysis 2 seems to be utilizing about 3 cores, so having faster 3 cores should help.

I specifically chose GTX 780 to save Phenom II in tough scenes with a lot of objects. I also have GTX 980 and 980Ti but it seemed unnecessary.