X2: The Threat	Source: Egosoft

A completely rewritten 3D engine based on DirectX8 encompasses many visual effects such as volumetric Nebulae (gas clouds) that have a real impact in the game (you can hide in them), many new engine, shield, weapon and explosion effects. Objects cast real dynamic 3D shadows! Dynamic DP3 bump mapping allows a previously unseen level of detail.

X2: The Threat - 800x600 x 32-bit
Processor	FPS	Ranking
Athlon64 3200+	150.5
Athlon64 3400+	158.5
Athlon64 FX-51	159.5
Pentium4 3.2GHz Extreme Edition	152.9
Pentium4 3.2GHz Northwood	138.7
Pentium4 3.2GHz Prescott	137.9

Contrary to the past few benchmarks, the X2 demo is based on an actual title, so the results gleaned from this test are reflective of game play. The performance difference between Prescott and Northwood continues to fall within a narrow gap, with Northwood edging out its successor. X2 clearly favors large caches, as the Extreme Edition picks up an extra 10 percentage points compared to the Northwood core. But even the Extreme Edition is no match for the Athlon 64 FX-51, which scores about four percent higher. AMD's Athlon 64 3400+ takes a second place overall finish, and the 3200+ falls in fourth place.

Comanche 4	Source: Novalogic

The Comanche 4 benchmark demo is a unique benchmark as it represents a real-world gaming experience. It contains the single player "Eagle's Talon" mission from the game as well as a detailed cinematic. This DirectX 8.1 benchmark demo will measure your system's performance in the standard frames per second format. The benchmark was run with audio disabled.

Comanche 4 - 800x600
Processor	FPS	Ranking
Athlon64 3200+	69.8
Athlon64 3400+	75.1
Athlon64 FX-51	78.3
Pentium4 3.2GHz Extreme Edition	75.7
Pentium4 3.2GHz Northwood	67.0
Pentium4 3.2GHz Prescott	58.6

Comanche 4 - 1024x768
Processor	FPS	Ranking
Athlon64 3200+	69.2
Athlon64 3400+	74.3
Athlon64 FX-51	77.0
Pentium4 3.2GHz Extreme Edition	75.2
Pentium4 3.2GHz Northwood	66.8
Pentium4 3.2GHz Prescott	58.5

Flight simulators are notorious for taxing processors. With such a wide variety of architectures represented here, it's interesting to note the configurations to which Comanche responds best. The Athlon 64 FX-51 takes a first-place finish, followed by the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. Clearly, the latter's large L3 cache makes a significant difference in performance over the Northwood core, which trails by about 11 percent. And even though Prescott sports a larger cache than Northwood, it trails by an additional 12 percent.