The presence of only one graphics card gives our current build a big advantage in power consumption. It also proves that we were wrong to assume we'd need more than a 380 W power supply. Our measurements apply to the complete build, including energy lost as heat within the PSU. The 400 W maximum input reflected for our tuned configuration corresponds to a 340 W output at 85% efficiency.

Our current build’s CPU also runs much cooler at 4.40 GHz compared to last quarter's overclocked build. This is in spite of the previous build’s use of a nearly identical CPU cooler, the same core architecture, and a lower overclocked voltage. We could credit part of the current system’s relatively cool operation to our own side-fan placement optimization, but we also know that Hyper-Threading facilitates better utilization. So, doubling up on Prime95 threads could very easily tax that platform more acutely, hurting thermal performance.

Since our new system is the competitor, we used the previous build’s stock performance as the baseline for our calculations. The new build starts out 25% slower, and its overclocked configuration finishes 22% slower than Q4's tuned machine.

The purpose of calculating average performance here is that it allows us to compare average power in our efficiency chart. Those calculations result in a baseline of 100%. But we subtract 100% from all of those results, since nothing can be more than 100% efficient. The resulting chart shows how far each alternative configuration deviates from that baseline.

Lower energy consumption allows today's build, which is marginally slower, to establish big gains in energy efficiency, gaining 49.5% in stock trim and 35.6% when overclocked. The reason the overclocked configuration picks up less efficiency is because its power consumption goes up faster than performance.
- Can $1,000 Buy A High-End PC?
- Graphics, CPU, And Motherboard
- DRAM, Storage, And Optical Drive
- Case, Power, And CPU Cooling
- Hardware Installation
- Overclocking
- Test Settings And Benchmarks
- Results: 3DMark And PCMark
- Results: SiSoftware Sandra
- Results: Battlefield 3 And F1 2012
- Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim And StarCraft II
- Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Results: Adobe Creative Suite
- Results: Productivity
- Results: File Compression
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Could We Have A Value Winner At $1,000?
Now instead of insults I can tell people "Don't be a stoogie". Thanks!
Otherwise, not much wriggle room here. Nice build!
Using the drive performance measurement to reflect program load times means loading all the programs on the SSD. And that explains why SSD capacity wasn't sacrificed to make more room in the budget for an HDD.
Looking from another perspective, these two builds, with two different builders, with $200 difference, just show(again) how much better price/performance wise are Intel CPU's and AMD GPU's.
I see your point, but I'd rather see slower game loads and better FPS , than faster game loads and lower FPS. And, the OS is accelerated in both cases anyway.
But hey, I'm on board with the 7870 Myst Edition CrossFire suggestion...I'll see if we can make it happen!
I think theres something to be said about the value at above $1000 though.. past this price range, people really start caring about having a nice case, nice cooler, etc that are more than just performance but aesthetics too.
Most likely they'd end up with a similar ugly case that no one would really want, possibly the same memory and hard disk, but the heart of the system would always be different.
Besides, people love rivalries. Sure, AMD processors blow in absolute performance, but they're cheap, and maybe the video card can save the day against the evil Intel/NVIDIA empires. It's a lot more interesting than testing two essentially identical machines, except for the hard disk.
Do it for different price ranges, and it might even be more competitive. $500, $750, and $1000 might not all have the same winner.
Pair a AMD CPU with a Nvidia GPU. So its expensive and may not perform as well.
(I will be extremely happy if this build performs well)