Last month, we reviewed the Monarch Hornet Pro with an AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 at stock speeds, with specially overclocked graphics cards from EVGA. Interestingly, we can see how the new AMD CPU overclocked plays into game performance when we compare this system to overclocked graphics cards with a stock CPU. Games demand system throughput horsepower at all resolutions, but when running at resolutions of 1024x768 and 1280x1024, the system is the limiting factor. Here we see the Falcon outperform the Monarch, as it has more CPU firepower. When the graphics card becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions, or with the feature sets cranked up, the overclocked graphics cards prevail. This comparison illustrates graphically the debate of graphics overclocking versus system overclocking.

If you want the best of both, overclock everything. Just be ready to cool it well!

3DMark05

The first of the benchmarks shows the Falcon leading the way with some very impressive scores at resolutions of 1024x768 and 1280x1024. At the default 1024x768 resolution, the new DDR2 SLI Memory gave the Mach V "a 700 point jump", says Falcon owner Kelt Reeves. That is a significant improvement, but the overclocked CPU and system gave the Mach V a 2,000 mark lead over the Monarch Hornet Pro. At higher resolutions, and as antialiasing and anisotropic filtering were enabled, the video cards became the limiting factor and the "uber-clocked" EVGA cards in the Monarch pulled ahead.