Benchmark Results: Productivity

Great comparison. I guess being poor is not all bad.

The performance of the $750 system is great for the price and i certainly agree with your statement "Yet the real winner is not the machine but its builder, as Paul Henningsen achieved a best value coup with AMD’s low-cost, overclockable, and unlockable Athlon II X3 435 processor."
A big +1 to Mr. Henningsen and the other builders.

Wow!!

Now I'm even more impressed with the Athlon II X3 435.

The 750$ Rig was the most impressive for me.

Its nice to know "Go BIG or Go Home" can GO AWAY!!!

Drop to a 500gb HDD and step up for the 1gb 4850s, and you have a very well balanced high power system with budget parts. Bravo Paul. Good showing Don and Tom.

I too agree that the credit should go to the builder - Mr. Henningsen
But I would say that it should also go to AMD for giving such a CPU...
Low-Mid segment, AMD still rules in terms of value and performance...

Outstanding results. I hope this helps kids who are building with Daddy's money understand that they don't need to waste it on a big edong. Furthermore, for all practical intents and purposes, FPS may be capped at 120Hz for 3D displays and 60Hz for the other 99.9+% of us, and higher [minimum] framerates ignored in the value comparisons as not being a visible improvement. Unlocking being partly a matter of luck though, it does still support the value of a quad-core processor, even in a budget build.
On the subject of AVG, I'd leave it in the benchmarks as a valid example of a program a lot of people use, making its results relevant even if they look a little odd.

I built my first build last October using a very similar setup.

Antec 300 Illusion (same case)
Gygabyte GA-MA790GPT-UD3H (same motherboard)
Western Digital Caviar Black WD5001AALS
G.Skill (2x2GB) DDR3 1333
AMD Phenom II X3 720
Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD 5750 (recently added)
Corsair 450VX
Samsung SH-S223B DVD Burner

At the time it cost slightly less, without OS and including the recently added Radeon HD 5750 totals $737.55

I have very similar benchmarks, slightly better actually and am very satisfied with the system. I have successfully unlocked the fourth core of the BE 720 and ran benchmarks after overclocking the processor and video card. It's an outstanding system for the price, more than I need. Actually I have locked back down the fourth core and do not keep it over-clocked as I don't do a lot of gaming.

IMO both the $750 and $1500 systems perform extremely well for the cost. From the looks of it the $3000 pc would be more of a status symbol.

I hope u guys start selling PCs on Newegg. "THG SMB Gaming PCs", I would like to buy that $750 PC, already built at that price or similar. It would save me alot of trouble building and ordering parts and it will become an instant best seller. You guys can destroy cyberpower and alienware and others. Paul Henningson, you can get rich fast.

I'm just a little curious though about the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. results. It says that the benchmark is using DX11. The $750 system is being evaluated there but is using HD4xxx video cards. How are you getting results for DX11 for that build? Anyway, great job as always guys! Although, I would have to say that to me the winning PC would be the $1500 OC as it was capable of staring down the $3k box and not flinch. Of course, I also say it because I have a 24" monitor and the $750 rig just doesn't cut it there unfortunately. Lastly, in one of the articles you guys asked if you should go back to the old $500/$1k/$2k builds. I think you guys are now in the new "sweet spots" for PC now. $750-$800/$1200-$1500/$2500-Obscene are good ranges these days. Hmm... maybe the "Obscene" should be a forth "bonus" build

I believe there are certain elements of DX11 that are backwards compatible with 10.1 cards. I could be wrong though.

What really ..... is newegg is in Canada, and I still can't join these delectable contests. Lucky 'Mericans.

Thanks for another fine series. Congrats again to Paul for such a great build at a very respectable price-point. I love seeing how well the lower-priced rigs do.

Great work!

I enjoyed reading about all 3 SBM builds. Very impressive and congratulations to Paul. Based on the results I am seriously considering going with AMD whenever I get the money to build a new computer. Hopefully by then, RAM and video card prices will have dropped.

The rules for the giveaway state that you DO NOT get the assembled PC, but the parts instead. I wonder why that is. Can someone from Toms comment on this?

Great marathon this time. While the most expensive builds have nearly never interested me due to budget constrains, this time the cheapest one is a hell of a machine!

Usually I set for the 'enthusiast' build, but this marathon brought up a real champion of the masses with the 750 build.

With a little budget Paul achieved what should be the core of the SBM series: the best performance on a given budget.
Mind you: not awesome synthetics that almost never translate into real world performance, not best bang/buck with cramped performance... real value where it really matters.

Grats to Paul and here's to waiting for the next SBM, you've set a really high bar here, mister.

Two things that strike me here:

1) That $750 rig packs an impressive amount of power for something so inexpensive.
2) You actually get very, very little for the money jumping from $1500 to $3000.

Great job, guys. The SBM articles are always my favorite, and this batch was even better than usual!