Benchmark Results: Synthetic
3DMark Vantage loves the overclocked $2,500 PC, while overclocking the $1,250 system almost lets it catch-up to the base speed of its pricey competitor.
PCMark is probably the one benchmark in our test suite where hard drive performance affects results big-time. It hands a huge win to the $2,500 machine’s RAID 0 SSD drives. We don’t use synthetics benchmarks in our value analysis, however.
Sandra’s CPU benchmarks perfectly reflect the computational power of each processor, regardless of other components.
In contrast to its CPU benchmarks, Sandra Memory Bandwidth shows the slower speed of AMD’s CPU core-to-RAM pathway when using DDR3 memory, a weakness that can be overcome by increasing HT clock. The mid-priced machine’s bandwidth triumph can be credited almost entirely to a locked core that forced its builder to “shoot for the moon” with HT clock. Conversely, the high-end system takes second place in bandwidth despite superior memory, its builder pampered by the easy overclocking of an unlocked “Black Edition” CPU.
