3DMark Vantage measures Shader 4.0 (i.e., DirectX 10) gaming performance. First we tried to run this program under the “Entry” profile with the motherboard on-board video enabled. Only AMD785G could run this program (achieving an Entry score of E2311); Intel G45 could not run 3DMark Vantage even on the “Entry” profile selected. This is old news in the industry: while officially Intel G45 is labeled as being a DirectX 10 part, in fact it can’t run DirectX 10 games or simulations.

The numbers you see below are the results running the “Performance” profile with the GeForce 9600 GT installed.

Under the “Performance” profile from 3DMark Vantage with a GeForce 9600 GT installed Athlon II X4 620 and Pentium E6300 achieved the same performance level, showing that for this program under this configuration the video card is the component that matters the most, not the CPU.

Comparing exclusively the CPU benchmark results from 3DMark Vantage, Athlon II X4 620 achieved a score 13.71% higher than Pentium E6300.