
By using a non-K-series processor and a motherboard without much overclocking flexibility, Paul misses most of the thrill that would have come from tweaking his $750 system. Graphics is all that remains for him to optimize.
In the first day of this quarter's System Builder Marathon, I mentioned that my huge liquid cooler could be seen by some as a waste of money, since the Core i7-4770K's die seems to suffer from thermal density issues. I guessed I'd shed no more than 3 °C and gain no more than 100 MHz compared to my results with larger air coolers. We see that 100 MHz difference here, even though the $1600 machine’s heat sink is slightly smaller those I had in mind.
| Test Hardware Configurations | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| $750 Gaming PC | $1600 Enthusiast PC | $2400 Reader's PC | |
| Processor (Overclock) | Intel Core i3-4130: 3.4 GHz, Two Physical Cores No O/C | Intel Core i7-4770K: 3.5 - 3.9 GHz, Four Physical Cores O/C to 4.4 GHz, 1.20 V | Intel Core i7-4770K: 3.5 - 3.9 GHz, Four Physical Cores O/C to 4.5 GHz, 1.25 V |
| Graphics (Overclock) | Zotac GeForce GTX 770: 1098 MHz GPU, GDDR5-7010 O/C to 1283 MHz, GDDR5-7610 | Galaxy GeForce GTX 780: 928 MHz GPU, GDDR5-7000 O/C to 1128 MHz, GDDR5-7300 | 2 x EVGA GeForce GTX 780: 902 MHz GPU, GDDR5-6008 O/C to 1059 MHz, GDDR5-6720 |
| Memory (Overclock) | 8 GB Adata DDR3-1600 CAS 9-9-9-24, No O/C | 8 GB Corsair DDR3-1866 CAS 9-10-9-27, No O/C | 16 GB G.Skill DDR3-1866 CAS 9-10-9-28, O/C to DDR3-2133 CL 10-11-10-28, 1.585 V |
| Motherboard (Overclock) | Asus H81M-K: LGA 1150, Intel H81 Express Stock 100 MHz BCLK | ASRock Z87 Pro3: LGA 1150, Intel Z87 Express Stock 100 MHz BCLK | ASRock Z87 Extreme4: LGA 1150, Intel Z87 Express Stock 100 MHz BCLK |
| Case | Rosewill Line-M | NZXT Phantom 410 | NZXT Phantom 410 |
| CPU Cooler | Intel Core i3 boxed cooler | Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO | Thermaltake CLW0217 Water 2.0 Extreme |
| Hard Drive | Western Digital WD10EZEX: 1 TB, 7200 RPM, 64 MB Cache | Samsung MZ-7TE120BW 120 GB, SATA 6Gb/s SSD | SanDisk SDSSDHP-256G-G2 256 GB SATA 6Gb/s SSD |
| Power | Rosewill Capstone-450-M: 450 W Semi-Modular, 80 PLUS Gold | Corsair TX650: 650 W, 80 PLUS Bronze | Corsair HX750: 750 W Semi-Modular, 80 PLUS Gold |
| Software | |||
| OS | Microsoft Windows 8 Pro x64 | ||
| Graphics | Nvidia ForceWare 332.21 WHQL | Nvidia GeForce 334.89 | Nvidia GeForce 335.23 |
| Chipset | Intel INF 9.4.0.1017 | Intel INF 9.4.0.1026 | Intel INF 9.4.0.1026 |
| Benchmark Configuration | |
|---|---|
| 3D Games | |
| Battlefield 4 | Version 1.0.0.1, DirectX 11, 100-sec. Fraps "Tashgar" Test Set 1: Medium Quality Preset, No AA, 4X AF, SSAO Test Set 2: Ultra Quality Preset, 4X MSAA, 16X AF, HBAO |
| Grid 2 | Version 1.0.85.8679, Direct X 11, Built-in Benchmark Test Set 1: High Quality, No AA Test Set 2: Ultra Quality, 8x MSAA |
| Arma 3 | Version 1.08.113494, 30-Sec. Fraps "Infantry Showcase" Test Set 1: Standard Preset, No AA, Standard AF Test Set 2: Ultra Preset, 8x FSAA, Ultra AF |
| Far Cry 3 | V. 1.04, DirectX 11, 50-sec. Fraps "Amanaki Outpost" Test Set 1: High Quality, No AA, Standard ATC, SSAO Test Set 2: Ultra Quality, 4x MSAA, Enhanced ATC, HDAO |
| Adobe Creative Suite | |
| Adobe After Effects CC | Version 12.0.0.404: Create Video which includes 3 Streams, 210 Frames, Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously |
| Adobe Photoshop CC | Version 14.0 x64: Filter 15.7 MB TIF Image: Radial Blur, Shape Blur, Median, Polar Coordinates |
| Adobe Premeire Pro CC | Version 7.0.0 (342), 6.61 GB MXF Project to H.264 to H.264 Blu-ray, Output 1920x1080, Maximum Quality |
| Audio/Video Encoding | |
| iTunes | Version 11.0.4.4 x64: Audio CD (Terminator II SE), 53 minutes, default AAC format |
| LAME MP3 | Version 3.98.3: Audio CD "Terminator II SE", 53 min, convert WAV to MP3 audio format, Command: -b 160 --nores (160 Kb/s) |
| HandBrake CLI | Version: 0.99: Video from Canon Eos 7D (1920x1080, 25 FPS) 1 Minutes 22 Seconds Audio: PCM-S16, 48,000 Hz, Two-channel, to Video: AVC1 Audio: AAC (High Profile) |
| TotalCode Studio 2.5 | Version: 2.5.0.10677: MPEG-2 to H.264, MainConcept H.264/AVC Codec, 28 sec HDTV 1920x1080 (MPEG-2), Audio: MPEG-2 (44.1 kHz, 2 Channel, 16-Bit, 224 Kb/s), Codec: H.264 Pro, Mode: PAL 50i (25 FPS), Profile: H.264 BD HDMV |
| Productivity | |
| ABBYY FineReader | Version 10.0.102.95: Read PDF save to Doc, Source: Political Economy (J. Broadhurst 1842) 111 Pages |
| Adobe Acrobat 11 | Version 11.0.0.379: Print PDF from 115 Page PowerPoint, 128-bit RC4 Encryption |
| Autodesk 3ds Max 2013 | Version 15.0 x64: Space Flyby Mentalray, 248 Frames, 1440x1080 |
| Blender | Version: 2.68A, Cycles Engine, Syntax blender -b thg.blend -f 1, 1920x1080, 8x Anti-Aliasing, Render THG.blend frame 1 |
| Visual Studio 2010 | Version 10.0, Compile Google Chrome, Scripted |
| File Compression | |
| WinZip | Version 18.0 Pro: THG-Workload (1.3 GB) to ZIP, command line switches "-a -ez -p -r" |
| WinRAR | Version 5.0: THG-Workload (1.3 GB) to RAR, command line switches "winrar a -r -m3" |
| 7-Zip | Version 9.30 alpha (64-bit): THG-Workload (1.3 GB) to .7z, command line switches "a -t7z -r -m0=LZMA2 -mx=5" |
| Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings | |
| 3DMark 11 | Version: 1.0.5.0, Benchmark Only |
| 3DMark Professional | Version: 1.2.250.0 (64-bit), Fire Strike Benchmark |
| PCMark 8 | Version: 1.0.0 x64, Full Test |
| SiSoftware Sandra | Version 2014.02.20.10, CPU Test = CPU Arithmetic / Multimedia / Cryptography, Memory Bandwidth Benchmarks |
Several application benchmarks have been updated for today’s presentation, so some of the numbers might appear inconsistent with previous articles, including individual build articles from this series.
- Three Strong Systems Face Off
- Benchmark And Overclocking Configurations
- Results: 3DMark And PCMark
- Results: SiSoftware Sandra
- Results: Battlefield 4
- Results: Arma 3
- Results: Grid 2
- Results: Far Cry 3
- Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Results: Adobe Creative Suite
- Results: Productivity
- Results: File Compression
- Power Consumption And Heat
- Overall Performance And Efficiency
- Picking A Performance-Value Winner
A couple of thoughts:
1. Is it true that gaming only gets 20-30% of the overall performance weighting? If so, I'd suggest moving that up to at least 50%. Even though I'm one for a balanced system, I still think the amount of $$ you're spending on the graphics capability should be reflected more in the overall performance rating.
2. There is quite a bit of back-and-forth on the impact of power consumption on these forums, and I think this competition would be a great place to factor in and raise awareness on the real costs of power consumption. I understand that electricity costs and system use varies greatly. But I would add in another value analysis incorporating the present value of 3 years' electricity costs using a discount rate (simple excel function 'pv'). Of course you would have to make some broad assumptions around average power, hours of use per day, whether or not you idle the system 24x7, and electricity cost, but I think the present value of 3 year electricity cost would make a decent impact on your value calculations across these systems.
I would suggest making a forum poll regarding this. From my steam library I can tell that I've been playing games on average 2.25 hours a day over the last 5 years, and since the bulk of my games are on steam (1400+) it's not much below my real usage. However despite being a gamer I find myself having the computer either idle or playing youtube etc for an amount equal to the time I'm playing games. Assuming I'm around average, with regards to gaming:idling ratio, that'd mean perhaps 3 hours gaming and 3 hours idle/video playback a day on average.
i didn't agree with any of the motherboard choices in this quarter's build. despite that, all three builds were very interesting in terms of performance, choice of parts and builds.
my takeaway from this is that ddr3 1333 is not the baseline for cheap system memory anymore. 2x 4GB ddr3 1600 and higher, especially 2x 8GB ddr3 1866 or higher memory is optimum for performance. don not enabling xmp for the $1600 pc's stock performance analysis helped me understand this.
haswell i7 ramped power and heat really high after 4.4ghz and bit more voltage. both were higher than don's previous o.c. of i5 4670k with asus z87-a board. i still don't like asrock. can you guys compare o.c. clockrates, temperature and voltage of haswell cpus used in sbm in q4 to see which combo was better? imo it'd help with how haswell behaves in real pcs instead of open test benches or test pcs.
I'll repeat again my request for non-linear value assessments for FPS>60 in games. I'm not saying it's invisible, but once play is smooth, the subjective experience is not going to get much better. This will make Paul's machine even better in the value analysis.
I'm really not sure what I would do with any of these. They're all built with some nice parts, but my existing PCs are meeting my needs quite nicely.
1. $2400 PC: Massive overkill for my needs, but there are things about it I like. I might build this with just one of the graphics cards, then pull the RAID Array out of my "Omega" system and add that, then donate the remainder of Omega for use as a server to a group that needs one. The second graphics card I'd probably give away to a Tom's reader who is not in the US.
2. $1600 PC: Not sure; I'd probably do some mixing and matching with parts from "Phoenix," likely ending up donating most of this one too (except for the graphics card).
3. $750 PC: I'd pull the graphics card for a HD6850, add a SSD, and build it for my Mom. She's not a gamer, but would no doubt appreciate the speedup from her older AM3 machine for editing her photos and other media.