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System Builder Marathon, June 2010: System Value Compared

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  • Performance
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June 18, 2010 6:00:15 AM

Smaller budgets were the rule for this quarter’s System Builder Marathon, but better performance was the exception. How will this affect our multi-budget value comparison? Check out the performance results, and don't forget to register to win these boxes!

System Builder Marathon, June 2010: System Value Compared : Read more

More about : system builder marathon june 2010 system compared

June 18, 2010 6:15:44 AM

Another great SBM. Goodluck to US Punters who get the chance to win theses systems. Look forward to the next round where Graphics hardware will take a step out of the lime light.
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6
June 18, 2010 6:23:59 AM

marry me tom's :D 
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0
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June 18, 2010 6:31:31 AM

It's interesting to see the performance/dollar shoot up for the $2000 pc when it comes to games. That just goes to show you how much of the budget went into graphics muscle. These machines were definitely built with gaming in mind.
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3
June 18, 2010 7:14:57 AM

touchdowntexas13It's interesting to see the performance/dollar shoot up for the $2000 pc when it comes to games. That just goes to show you how much of the budget went into graphics muscle. These machines were definitely built with gaming in mind.

Yes, the only way to smash those benchmarks is with a faster CPU (2/3 of tests) or graphics (1/3 of tests). The problem with upgrading the CPU is that the 980X would cost 50% of the total budget. We haven't seen a big improvement in overclocking by using a higher-model quad-core i7
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June 18, 2010 7:26:59 AM

CrashmanYes, the only way to smash those benchmarks is with a faster CPU (2/3 of tests) or graphics (1/3 of tests). The problem with upgrading the CPU is that the 980X would cost 50% of the total budget. We haven't seen a big improvement in overclocking by using a higher-model quad-core i7


Oh no I wasn't suggesting at all that you should have gone with a 980X for the $2000 build. That's way too expensive for a $2000 limit. The 930 does it's job just fine.

It just amazed me that two 470's in SLI were able to best the performance/dollar of the cheaper builds. Typically you see diminishing gains as you get into the more expensive components.

It was a very interesting set of articles any way you look at it. Gamers on a budget should especially be interested in this SBM.
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3
June 18, 2010 7:55:41 AM

touchdowntexas13It just amazed me that two 470's in SLI were able to best the performance/dollar of the cheaper builds. Typically you see diminishing gains as you get into the more expensive components.
I was pretty amazed too, but I really want to give credit to $1000 PC builder Don for making the GTX 470 SLI suggestion for the $2000 machine. Spot on Don!
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0
June 18, 2010 8:46:35 AM

Overall this month's SBM was good, especially the scalability of the 470s was brought into prominence.Though overclocking those in SLI is certainly not a viable option, unless one steals power from the Hoover Dam.
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3
June 18, 2010 9:20:54 AM

Did anyone notice that the 858w microwave has a power supply rated for 750w.....sizzle.....pop.....anyone smell smoke...? Running f@h on that machine the power company would have to burn a ton of coal a day and you'd get threat mail from them when you cause a brown out. Ah....But all those PPD.
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-6
June 18, 2010 9:56:56 AM

Interesting. Based on a previous article, an Athlon II X2 440 wouldn't be enough to let the 470s in SLI stretch out; I wonder what the minimum CPU there would be.
AND, since many of us found problems in these builds, if those were "fixed" (possibly costing more), those results would be useful too.
Lots of good information in this SBM round. Very nice.
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4
June 18, 2010 10:58:35 AM

WillrooDid anyone notice that the 858w microwave has a power supply rated for 750w.....sizzle.....pop.....anyone smell smoke...? Running f@h on that machine the power company would have to burn a ton of coal a day and you'd get threat mail from them when you cause a brown out. Ah....But all those PPD.

Silverstone says it outputs 77 to 80% of what you input. That's 670W of power output at 858W power input. It's rated at 750W continuous power output, but don't let the facts get in the way of a rant, eh?
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3
June 18, 2010 11:53:18 AM

Nice work on all the builds with some interesting choices. I would never have thought that a 1,000w power supply would really be needed for those 470s. I enjoyed reading about every build, nice work by the SBM crew.
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0
June 18, 2010 12:51:01 PM

I'd like to win any of these. The first just needs a quality PSU, then I'd give it to a family member. If I won one of the others, I'd probably do some parts swapping with my current system(s), keeping the result as my primary system and giving the other one to a family member, and would likely have a GPU left over for another system.
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1
June 18, 2010 1:16:25 PM

Quote:
Moreover, the shockingly power-hungry $2,000 overclocked system offers a similarly-surprising 95% efficiency rating compared to our $550 baseline.


Image says 84%, which is rather less surprising.
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1
June 18, 2010 2:06:56 PM

Okay, we know Fermi uses a lot of power, big deal. So does the 4870. Damn Fermi jokes are already played out more than "Can it play Crysis?"
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-5
June 18, 2010 2:13:22 PM

i think the psu choices are a bit odd. the $550 needs a better psu, and the $2000 needs a bigger psu of the same quality...
but they are great otherwise!
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2
June 18, 2010 4:03:49 PM

I love these system builder marathon articles! Keep up the great work!
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1
June 18, 2010 4:11:17 PM

I'm still not sure the 720BE is tested right. Unlocking a core could be completely misleading for someone buying the CPU, because they might not be so lucky, and then are going to be disappointed. It might be more meaningful if the core wasn't used. It's also a little scary running one since CPUs don't always fail dramatically, and sometimes just failed a small test that might not reveal itself for a while, and give bad results later on. I'm not that comfortable with that.

But, perhaps more importantly, the 720BE might overclock better were it not for using the "bad" core. It's not that including the extra core results are so bad, but I think including the results without the core would have been very meaningful as well.

It's almost contradictory to say you may or may not unlock a core, so beware, and then not include results in the event you can't unlock the core. Even with the uncertainty with CPUs in terms of overclockability, this adds more than is necessary.
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0
June 18, 2010 5:32:28 PM

This SBM mainly the budget gaming system is great, shows you don't have to break the bank to get a pretty adequate gaming system. Of course it is hard to please everyone at every level but this one did a decent job. I would also like to see the 5770 in crossfire and how that performs and hopefully the Nvidia GTX460 will be out for testing also.
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June 18, 2010 5:48:50 PM

I normally support Intel and Nvidia but I gotta say this test isn't fair. 5830 is the worst value in AMD/ATI's line up while 470 is Nvidia's best value.

The $1000 would have a clear lead over the $2000 machine if it is paired with two 5770 or 5850.
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2
June 18, 2010 5:59:21 PM

i have a pc that almost like about 700$ it is a quad core and it is even better than the 1000$ dollar one it is faster
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-4
Anonymous
June 18, 2010 8:15:08 PM

Is there any cost savings in buying a complete off the shelf system and upgrading certain components. I think this would make and interesting read: System modifier marathon!
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June 18, 2010 9:57:06 PM

Rob RobideauIs there any cost savings in buying a complete off the shelf system and upgrading certain components. I think this would make and interesting read: System modifier marathon!


I don't know if there is, but once you start replacing things, you're probably not going to end up saving money, and probably cost yourself some. If you can just add stuff, maybe.

But, if you look a little closer, do you really want to trust the junk that HP, Dell, Apple, etc... put in their machines? To me, the most important component is the power supply, because if it goes bad, you're risking bigger failures downstream. And also a flaky power supply or one that isn't very close to spec can cause unreliability and premature failure. I need to know my power supply is good, and I would never get that feeling from a "big-name" maker. They can't communicate the value of that to customers easily, and so can't use these good parts as they add cost but little or no perceived value.

They also come with generally slow memory, again, because the average public isn't going to understand CL7 or CL9 memory. So they go with cheap. For small cache processors like the Athlon II x3 and x4 particularly, memory speed is significant, and they don't care about saving $2 even when it doesn't make sense. So, you'd have to toss it in many cases.

Also, do you feel comfortable using a weird HP/Dell/Lenovo etc... motherboard? I don't want that rubbish in my house. I'm much more comfortable with Intel, Supermicro, and strangely, Gigabyte than something from a big company that generally has fewer options and often weird BIOS screens. I also question the reliability, because, again, they are after cheap, not great quality.

So, there are a lot of reasons for wanting to build from scratch. In addition, for me, an additional one is I don't use a standard keyboard, so that's throwaway. Maybe you have a special mouse, or whatever. The point is, you have choices when you build your own, and throwing them away and trusting a big company isn't something I want to do. Do you?


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June 19, 2010 3:50:12 AM

I want 2000 $ PC i.e 2000*50=INR 100000 for that i have to break a bank or to study hard (m in 10 STD) and get a good job............
Which did u all guys suggest?? .........
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June 19, 2010 4:48:55 AM

khicharkumarI want 2000 $ PC i.e 2000*50=INR 100000 for that i have to break a bank or to study hard (m in 10 STD) and get a good job............Which did u all guys suggest?? .........

How about getting the $550 system with a 5770? I am not in India nor really tight on money but still don't feel like spending that much just to play game. A sensible versatile computer makes much more sense.
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June 19, 2010 12:32:56 PM

Once again I am left wondering if you could not have done better with the systems and money. I think its very questionable to use 2 GTX470 since SLI and dual graphics is more the exception then the rule. I am also wondering why they opted for the Core i7 instead of the 6-core AMD that should have good numbers in productivity and has the PCI-e lanes for 4 graphics cards.
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1
June 20, 2010 5:09:13 AM

The perf/dollar and perf/power comparisons, while accurate, don't quite tell the whole story.
By including synthetic results in these comparisons, you'd be far better to spend extra cash on a 6-core amd cpu and go with a couple of 5770s or a single 5870 or something.
Or saying it another way: these machines are clearly being built as gaming machines, while synthetics are nice to have, gamers don't worry much about them. Maybe it'd be good to see an additional perf/dollar perf/watt comparsion with just the games factored in. I think we'd see things change for the $1000 build.
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June 20, 2010 5:12:14 AM

Rob RobideauIs there any cost savings in buying a complete off the shelf system and upgrading certain components. I think this would make and interesting read: System modifier marathon!


I did that for my wife's machine, originally purchased as a HP slimline for $300. New video card, case and power supply bumped it up almost $300 more and at the time it probably would have been compared to a $550 budget build.
Free copy of Vista though, so there's that.
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0
June 20, 2010 12:16:37 PM

personally, I think that classifying the builds should only be based on their cost.It's not important whether the case contains 2 or 4 cards in Xfire as long as its cost remains within budget limits.Based on that, I think the previous $750 build is much better for longevity,upgradability,...etc.
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June 20, 2010 12:21:46 PM

"Our $2,000 PC looks a little light at the other end of the pricing scale, simply because the elaborate storage solutions familiar to the high-end market have a negligible impact on the benchmarks we use to determine value."

then you should think of a way to measure these benefits
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0
June 20, 2010 1:45:13 PM

Very interesting tests. What surprised me was the encoding benchmarks with not much difference between the athlon and phenom cpus.
Looking at the results though, it seems that Intel is the way to go for encoding.
What also concerns me is the AM3 platform's memory bandwidth. As this is on-die, I can easily see a Phenom II derivative dropping DDR2 support and getting a DDR3 memory boost. Just head into quad channel territory why not?
cb
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Anonymous
June 20, 2010 4:09:38 PM

I think that they should have added a second HDD for a RAID 0. It would be fully justified in a high-end system, and would not have caused them to go over-budget.
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1
June 20, 2010 5:03:45 PM

"while the $1,000 and $2,000 systems are butter-smooth at the target 1920x1080 and 2560x1600 resolutions."

I wouldn't call 29.5 FPS on the $1000 system "Butter-Smooth" Unless if the min FPS are in teh range of 25FPS but I think the min FPS are lower here

"Who could possibly interpret these AVG results? The $2,000 PC continues its win, but we’ve no consistent observations to determine how or why."

It's possibly the Ram speed change

"WinRAR and 7-Zip both love clock speed. Both compression applications also appear to prefer Core i7 architecture, which is present only in our $2,000 build."

but they are also well-threaded
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0
June 20, 2010 9:09:45 PM

So guys what would be a Better path....???

1. Get Athlon X3 440+5850 and then when it cant play games at 1980x1020 then upgrade Cpu+Gpu+Mobo....??

or.

2. Get i7 930+5850 and then add another 5850...??
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June 22, 2010 12:55:38 AM

This is a great series for folks on a budget looking for the highest frame rate for the buck. This is probably super for your target audience, but you leave out one group. Folks that have a budget for high end components and want to build a fast, dependable, and oh yeah, impressive system. Folks that want to tell their friends "I built that". So I want a fast booting, rock solid, quiet and, you bet, impressive system that I can brag to my 25 year old son, that I built.
X-58 motherboard: check but which one? Not just the most expensive, but the best.
Processor: 975 or 980?
Hard drive: SSD for boot, plus 2TB for games and video storage. Which ones?
Power supply: Minimum 750 watts. Here you do go for the gold in your articles so I've got that one.
Graphics card: Like wise, you regularly give us a round up of the best and newest, so I've got that.
Case: Not the most expensive, but the most impressive to the eye, and able to house a liquid cooling system (Quiet, remember?)

Now that might be an article.
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0
June 23, 2010 1:29:23 PM

$500 computer every year or $2000 every 4 years which is a better choice?
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June 24, 2010 7:55:13 AM

I would really like to see some testing under linux for these builds. I know incompatibilities happen much less often now than they used to but there it would be nice to know how things work, both with default and with manufacturers' drivers.

Dave Jackson
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0
Anonymous
June 28, 2010 1:20:01 AM

I think the EVGA X58 LE and a single 5970 should've been used instead on the $2000 build.
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0
Anonymous
June 30, 2010 11:35:27 AM

Guys, why the preference for AMD? Is Intel currently not superior in almost all respects?
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-3
June 30, 2010 12:01:24 PM

rccGuys, why the preference for AMD? Is Intel currently not superior in almost all respects?
It's in the $2000 machine! There are budgets on these machines, when you say "almost" are you intentionally leaving price out of the equation?
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0
July 2, 2010 7:12:43 PM

I build on budgets and I nearly always go with AMD unless on special request for Intel because of the price disparity.
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1
Anonymous
July 3, 2010 10:09:11 AM

Testing Win7 64bit system with 2GB of RAM ? That computer is no good for work.
It had to be 4GB and price tag $600 other option - include HD5670 (or similar nVidia solution) instead of HD5770.
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-3
Anonymous
July 4, 2010 5:42:49 AM

Every time I visit the system builder,I get upset.Why should throw away my P35-DQ6 motherboard with its Q9550 and 4GB of RAM in it, and buy a weaker phenom II X3 based motherboard?(Plus I have a 850W power supply and I only want to upgrade my GPU if possible.)
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-3
August 11, 2010 8:16:35 AM

OC $1000 = $2000 (in some games).

The power of overclocking!!!

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0
August 26, 2010 7:37:20 PM

Judging by the gaming benchmarks (as well as some of the others... but not so much), this data tells me that the 1000 dollar computer is not significantly better than the 500 dollar one.

Just my two cents, but this goes back to what very many people were saying in the $1000 dollar computer build comments: I think the AMD processors showed an incapability in many cases to provide good increases in performance despite the massive graphics spending increase from the $500 to the $1000 computer.

Compounded with the some of the CPU/GPU bottleneck results in the Building a Balanced Gaming PC articles, I think a i5-750 with a single 5850 (or 470) would've been significantly better than the X3/ xfire 5830's combo in the $1000 computer, and been a good middlepoint between the 500 and 2000 dollar computers.
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0
!