SBM 5: Price/Performance

Value Analysis, Continued

Averaging Game, Application, and Synthetic performance differences for each system gives us an overall score which should more closely approximate the way these "feel" in daily use.

Finally, dividing the overall performance difference for each system by its price difference quantifies its comparative value.

Because overclocking increases performance without necessarily adding expense, overclocking the low-cost rig gave it a value exceeding 100%. Don Woligroski's low-cost build is the only system that was able to provide "more than we paid for" performance because the closest competitor only reached 92% of its base value when the later was fully overclocked. The high-performance system overclocked extremely well, yet its high price netted only 55% of the performance per dollar.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.