Results: 3DMark And PCMark
The System Builder Marathon $2550 machine was built to excel in both games and productivity applications, so a bunch of its money went towards three-way SLI. It was also overclocked a little further than Lenovo’s Erazer X700, so it makes a clean sweep of 3DMark.
The $1300 PC was configured to be a mid-grade desktop that excels in games, so its budget was also skewed towards graphics. It achieves a higher graphics score in 3DMark, but its Physics score is sub-par, even compared to my own ASRock M8 review.
PCMark is primarily limited by hard drive performance, though this recent version puts a little more emphasis on the rest of the system. The $1300 to $1535 machines still perform well, in spite of lower host processing core counts.
