I just got my i7 11.6" model in today, and some of you may know that I have been reviewing games a bit (thread is named "Early Gameplay") for the MBA. The i5 had definitely wowed me, but I was expecting the i7 to add a few points to my framerate here and there. My expectations have been quite low, but I never would have imagined that the performance would be worse.
Loaded up a bootcamp version of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and proceeded to play Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition. There is a built in benchmark for the game, but admittedly it isn't a scientific process. However, there haven't been any major distributions of framerates with my i5 MBA which I tested around 20 times. Usually the average with the game settings on low (backgrounds on high) and running at 1280x720 were 55-58FPS, just 2-5FPS shy of what is needed for arcade quality gameplay...
So I proceeded to test using my i7 MBA and now I'm seeing framerates drop to 40! The settings for the game are exactly the same, but for some reason the game feels throttled. Is this a problem with the way the i7 handles threads?
Things I Checked:
So what I'd like to know is, what the hell? Anyone else seeing a problem when gaming?
Loaded up a bootcamp version of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and proceeded to play Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition. There is a built in benchmark for the game, but admittedly it isn't a scientific process. However, there haven't been any major distributions of framerates with my i5 MBA which I tested around 20 times. Usually the average with the game settings on low (backgrounds on high) and running at 1280x720 were 55-58FPS, just 2-5FPS shy of what is needed for arcade quality gameplay...
So I proceeded to test using my i7 MBA and now I'm seeing framerates drop to 40! The settings for the game are exactly the same, but for some reason the game feels throttled. Is this a problem with the way the i7 handles threads?
Things I Checked:
- Power Adapter Plugged in
- Battery set to High Performance
- Nothing running in the background
- Settings are exactly the same
- CPU-ID indicated that my clockspeed was ~2.6GHz
So what I'd like to know is, what the hell? Anyone else seeing a problem when gaming?