Benchmark Results: Metro 2033

We’ll begin our game testing with Metro 2033, a demanding title equally capable of taxing host and graphics processors.

These numbers suggest a slight minimum frame rate advantage favoring the A8-3870K, while the Pentium/Radeon combo manages a much higher average. Let’s take a closer look at the frame rates over time:

The results appear quite close. As you can see, the discrete graphics card facilitates a high frame rate at the end of the benchmark. But during the rest of the run, performance maps pretty similarly. In this title, specifically, it's hard to pinpoint any practical difference between the three tested configurations. Curiously, the overclock doesn’t accomplish much.

Unfortunately, we had to drop our test resolution all the way to 1024x768 in order to get playable performance. If that's too low for you to accept, know that none of these setups will deliver a satisfying experience. Getting the most out of Metro 2033 simply requires more platform horsepower.