System Builder Marathon, March 2011: Value Compared
Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
Budget builders often ask why AMD's processors rarely crop up in our $1000 builds, and iTunes helps illustrate the answer. At its 3.4 GHz overclocked frequency, the $500 build can’t compete with the $1000 build’s 3.30 GHz baseline. On top of that, the $1000 PC’s processor overclocks far better, easily passing the baseline of the $2000 build. AMD plans to correct this CPU performance deficit in its next architecture introduction.
HandBrake results are similar to iTunes, except that overclocking the $1000 PC results in far lower gains.
Does Intel Hyper-Threading technology hurt TMPGEnc performance? The $2000 PC falls behind the $1000 build at stock frequencies.
MainConcept reflects what we saw in HandBrake, with the overclocked $1000 machine edging out the $2000 system’s non-overclocked results. The $500 build is barely better than half as fast.
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tapher A $500 build, together with a Sony FW900 or equivalent monitor, could be had for under $800 total. Wow!Reply -
qwertymac93 hmp_gooseDid you just say "$300 monitor on a $500 box"? Really?Reply
how much is a good surround sound system?
how much is a blu-ray player?
I rest my case. -
jsowoc What if you scaled down from 100% as opposed to up from 100%? If the 2kOC machine had 100 in each category, the SSD would be "naturally" toned down. The $500 machine would be at ~40% for gaming, A/V and productivity, and ~10% for storage.Reply
Taking a simple average you'd get that the $500 machine is typically about 30% the speed of the $2000 OC machine. An SSD does improve the day-to-day performance of a computer significantly. -
Ragnar-Kon Being the poor college student I am, the blue bar is my favorite. And that O/C'd $1000 build is looking pretty good in my book. I've built AMD systems since the Athlon XP days because the price/performance ratio of Intel chips just wasn't worth it to me. But, I shall have to take a close look at the Intel i5 for my next build.Reply
qwertymac93how much is a good surround sound system?how much is a blu-ray player?I rest my case.1) Surround sound system = not worth it.
2) Blu-ray player = Definitely not worth it.
3) $300 monitor = not worth it.
Of course, this could be the my inner poor college student talking. I'm sure for some people it is worth it. -
sudeshc you can get good LED monitor of decent size in under $100 and that would be perfect for $500 build.Reply -
Luay A job well done Tom! Thankyou.Reply
The $500 AMD machine underperformed in the CPU department. I think the Intel i3 2120 paired with a H61 motherboard would have been the better choice.
$1,000 rig was near perfection.
$2,000 rig suffered from CPU bottlenecks at resolutions lower than 2560x1600 so it should be paired with at least $600 worth of display(s). -
Dyers Eve Well I think we are all thinking the same thing and that is holy jebus SSDs are awesome. 60GB SSDs are at around $120 now so maybe in a year the $500 builds will get an SSD.Reply
Your second to last paragraph needlessly bashes the $500 system. So a cheap build is bad for a user that only wants performance? Well, duh.
Your $500 build was titled as a gaming PC and now that only counts for 30% of average performance. Mixing all of the stats into one performance bar is useless to everyone. Keep the gamer/av/production separate as that is more useful. -
scootermg If you wanted to alter these PCs from "Gamers Rig" to "Programmers Rig" (ie. capable of running several virtual machines, with Ubuntu 64 as host). What would you alter?Reply
I was thinking of taking the $2K model and
-- doubling up the RAM from 8 to 16
-- cutting from 2 SSD to 1
-- downgrading the graphics card, to I don't know what
-- deleting the CPU cooler.. I will not be over-clocking
-- leaving the rest as is
I propose downgrading the 2K PC vice upgrading the 1K because I feel ASUS/INTEL/Ubuntu64 combo is better for virtualization than AROCK/INTEL.
Maybe the 1K PC can do it also.