3D Performance Results

Once we completed our CPU test suite, we took some time to play some games with the TPU community to get an overall feel for gaming on the M5A97 EVO. After a couple of days we settled in to complete our 3D benchmarking, feeling confident that the ASUS M5A97 EVO was going to put on a good show. Let's take a look at what numbers the board provided.

3DMark11

Once we ran 3DMark11, it became clear that a trend was emerging. The numbers closely mimic what we saw in the Cinebench GPU test.

Civilization 5

Our first real-world 3D performance test comes in the form of Civilization 5, using the included benchmark. We let the game recommend us settings, and then disabled V-SYNC and AA to eliminate bottlenecks introduced by the GPU itself. We weren't disappointed in the ASUS M5A97 EVO, as it managed to duplicate numbers given by the Gigabyte and ASUS boards we looked at earlier. However, because the numbers are so close, we have to replace this benchmark in the near future. However, the Civilization 5 benchmark does serve to show that although the Phenom II platform lags in some performance areas, this is only reflected in certain types of workloads.

F1 2010

Our second real-world 3D performance test comes from CodeMasters, in the form of the "F1 2010" included benchmark. We let the game recommend us settings, which included 8xAA with our newly added HD6950 2GB from Sapphire. Again we were unimpressed, as F1 2010 proves to be one of our personal favorites, and the ASUS M5A97 EVO again noticed lower performance than the other, more recent products we've tested in the past few months. However, this only makes us eager to see what AMD's new AM3+ CPUs can do.

With the CPU and 3D performance compares out of the way, we decided to take a closer look at the other features offered by the ASUS M5A97_EVO, as it manages to pack a lot of punch. Hit the next page to see how it panned out.