System Builder Marathon, March 2010: $1,500 Enthusiast PC
Benchmark Results: DiRT 2 And S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Armed with two Radeon HD 5850s, even taxing DirectX 11 features like tessellation aren’t a problem. This is definitely not the case when it comes to a single graphics card running DiRT 2 in DirectX 11 mode--our recent performance analysis showed that even the mighty Radeon HD 5870 can only manage about 30 frames per second at 2560x1600 when 4x AA is applied.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. shows a performance increase with the overclock, but it only makes a practical difference at 2560x1600 at ultra-high details with 4x AA applied. At all of the lower settings and resolutions, the game performs so smoothly that any overclocking increases are academic.
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skora I find it funny Cleeve that you mention the effects of ATIs monopoly on the high end GPU market but nothing on the CPU front. How much better off would we all be if AMD had a competing product for the Core i5/7s.Reply
Out of curiosity, how big is the storage capacity needed for your benchmark suit? I know you were over budget, but how close could you have come to one of the lower capacity SSDs and their performance advantages? -
The labels on all the charts appear to be wrong. They're mentioning a "Current $1300 System" but I thought the current system was $1500?Reply
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anamaniac To be honest, this just somehow seems disappointing to me.Reply
But then I think of how much I spent on my rig, and got less, I'm even more disappointed.
It's crazy that prices keep raising on everything though. 6 months ago I was $9/GB for DDR2, in Canadian dollars. $12.50/GB for DDR3. It's absolutely ridiculous. -
Crashman OtusIt looks like i5->i7 is not worth it for gamers. The increases when FPSReply
I've got news for you: i3->i7 is not worth it for gamers. Tom's Hardware has an interesting article in the works. -
p1n3apqlexpr3ss @CrashmanReply
Sounds good, this something to do with the i3 HTed vs traditional quad thing? -
Crashman p1n3apqlexpr3ss@CrashmanSounds good, this something to do with the i3 HTed vs traditional quad thing?Reply
I think it's a Windows 7 thread shifting and dual-threaded games thing, since both the i3 and i7 have HT. -
Stardude82 SethVNThe labels on all the charts appear to be wrong. They're mentioning a "Current $1300 System" but I thought the current system was $1500?Reply
The whole comparison is BS. $200 is a lot of money where I come from and the stock cooling on the i5 750 is garbage. The low-end Conroes had much better cooling and they were only 65W TDP. I say stick your no-name heatsink on last quarters machine, call it a $1400 box, redo the overclocking and then publish the results as that way they will be at least somewhat relevant.