System Builder Marathon: $625 Gaming PC
Benchmark Results: Synthetics
The $625 PC with its Radeon HD 4850 and higher-clocked CPU leaves last month’s $500 PC far behind. The largest increase we see with overclocking is in the Performance Preset, as the CPU score is more heavily weighted. Of course, as with all synthetic tests, you’ll want to take these numbers with a grain of salt, since they’re not necessarily written to represent real-world performance.
When running the same test with the E5200 at 4.3 GHz, the overall score jumped to P7608.
Overclocking sees a nice boost in the system, productivity, and even the memory tests. We see no improvement in the hard drive test, though. The $625 PC pulls away from the previous $500 PC in all these synthetic tests
We close out the testing suite with massive gains in the Sandra benchmarks although we don’t nearly see as high a memory bandwidth increase as we saw last month with the $500 PC and its 400 MHz FSB.
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slomo4sho I forgot to mention that I still would like to see power consumption charts and possibly a AMD based build at this price point.Reply -
nerrawg Impressive results! Who says a system price has to adhere to budget figures of 500, 1500 and 4500 dollars, you guys really showed how much added value can be had when the right OC parts are purchased and assembled into a nice package. Well done!Reply -
cloudbase Hiya. Can you guys give a bit more detail about the 'further upgrades' you were inferring in the text of this article? So: Which P45 crossfire motherboard would have been nice; which RAM was out of stock; what would have been the benefiot of the more expensive CPU?Reply
Im looking to spend a similar amount, but as I already have the case, PSU etc it makes sense to explore those options.
Presumably a 4870 would be better again?
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radguy Thats a pretty awesome build thanks for the article. Although I am sorry but I have to ask. Do we have our real 4ghz dual core for $84 now?Reply -
jaragon13 Sorry? What's with the comment box? I can't see what I'm typing.Reply
Anyways,my GTX 260 suffers on Crysis,so it's nothing new. -
Pei-chen Great choice, let the AMD fan boys whiny; I would have picked the same setup if I am to build a cheap gaming PC.Reply -
matt2k Nice build for the money, though i personally would have sprung for a crossfire ready motherboard, the MSI P45 Neo2-FR for example.Reply
The only problem i have with this though is the operating system. surely that should be quite a major factor when creating a whole new system? and it would be nice to have the different vista's compared for gamers. i.e. is ultimate worth the bump in price for the extra's or is xp professional still the best option.
just my thoughts. -
zodiacfml Nicest article, not only you did not stick to any budget but also the parts chosen could not have been any better. This is a build i'm planning except i could have chosen a less performing 9800GT since its only in Crysis where a 4850 has a usable advantage over it.Reply
I am an AMD user for years but this pentium dual core overclocks so far over an athlon x2. -
wh3resmycar someone from the forums was asking me months back where i can find a 4ghz e5200.. i guess this is it.Reply