F1 2010 appears CPU-bound by all three builds when using its High Quality preset, even with the $2400 PC’s Core i7-2600K pushed all the way to 4.6 GHz.
Muscling past that bottleneck requires cranking the graphics details up to Ultra Quality and adding 8x AA, where GPU performance is finally reflected at 2560x1600.
The $1200 PC is always held back by its FX-6100, while the $600 PC is limited by its single Radeon HD 6870. If only someone would combine the $600 machine's CPU with the $1200 machine’s graphics subsystem (though you'd need a better motherboard, too, since the H61 Express-based platform doesn't accommodate CrossFire).
Summary
- Wait, Bigger Isn’t Always Better?
- Test Settings
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark And PCMark
- Benchmark Results: SiSoftware Sandra
- Benchmark Results: Crysis
- Benchmark Results: F1 2010
- Benchmark Results: Just Cause 2
- Benchmark Results: Metro 2033
- Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Power And Heat
- Average Performance And Efficiency
- Which One Of These Builds Is For You?
