DiRT: Showdown, Hitman: Absolution, And Sniper Elite V2
DiRT: Showdown
DiRT: Showdown's built-in benchmark is very tough on both the CPU and GPU.
With all quality settings maxed out, each notebook delivers playable average frame rates. The Eurocom's two GeForce GTX 680Ms in SLI maintain the top position, but again the benefit of two cards isn't as pronounced next to the 780M's compelling performance. In fact, the GeForce GTX 780M enjoys a nice 20% improvement over a single GeForce GTX 680M.
We know DiRT to be both CPU- and memory-bound, so as we start relaxing the graphics load, those bottlenecks begin showing up.
At Medium quality settings, Eurocom's machine is completely platform-bound. MSI's GT70 also exhibits the same symptoms, but still manages to stay a few FPS ahead of Alienware's system on average.
Hitman: Absolution
Hitman: Absolution is the opposite of Sniper Elite V2 when it comes to resource utilization. In the game's built-in benchmark, thousands of NPCs are animated throughout the scene. The overhead needed to animate these non-player characters means that the GPU may end up waiting for the CPU to finish.
In the Ultra quality benchmark, both the MSI and Eurocom machines are CPU-limited. Alienware's sample trails behind, but is able to pull slightly ahead of MSI at 1366x768.
Taking the quality down a notch improves scores, but not as much for MSI's GT70. The Alienware system, with its single GeForce GTX 680M and Core i7-3940XM, manages to pull ahead of both comparison machines at 1366x768.
At Medium quality, the Alienware pulls ahead of the MSI in all screen resolutions, and ahead of the Eurocom in two of them. This is largely academic since no one with any of these systems would be playing at the medium setting, or at a resolution of 1366x768. All of these machines can run Hitman with max settings.
Sniper Elite V2
The built-in benchmark for Sniper Elite V2 places a light load on our CPUs, but serves up a punishing GPU workload. These benchmarks are a good way to demonstrate the graphics capabilities of each machine.
With the game maxed-out at the Ultra quality preset, each card is able to deliver playable frame rates at every setting.
Throttling down to the High quality preset changes very little about the placing of these three mobile platforms.
Dropping to Medium quality settings allows each configuration to continue speeding up.
Although the benchmark results at Low quality settings are higher, the GT70 was playable at the Ultra preset, and that's probably where you'd find us playing the game.
