System Builder Marathon, December 2010: $2000 PC
With all of your feedback from last quarter's System Builder Marathon under our belts, this time around, we attempt to fit a no-sacrifice, luxury and performance build into our moderately-high $2000 budget. Will this new build succeed on all fronts?
Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
Apple iTunes is threaded so poorly that even dual-core chips prove to be overkill.
The current build uses a quad-core CPU at very high clock speeds, winning out over the previous build’s six-core processor that can't overclock as well.
HandBrake, on the other hand, is well-threaded, allowing the previous build's extra cores to trump the current build’s higher clocks.
The DivX codec is well-threaded, while this version of the Xvid codec is not. The previous system and new system swap positions in TMPGEnc, depending on which codec is used.
MainConcept is also well-threaded, yet the new build’s high overclock at least keeps it in the same performance class.
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micr0be i think im gona get a revo 2 drive ssd to upgrade my current build.... all thanks to santa !!Reply -
Tamz_msc Its good to know that choosing the wrong memory can affect performance in such a way.Reply -
fstrthnu I'm pretty surprised we didn't see Geforce GTX 570s in this build, I guess they got released too late to make it here.Reply -
kkiddu Most perfect build ever ? Just read the configs yet, and I think that's a possibility.Reply
Now don't skin me if the config proves to be a flop in the coming pages. Just read the first page and couldn't resist a comment. -
hemburger Why not replace the two ssd's with a single intel 120gb... same price and now on 35nmReply -
kkiddu I think this one can be trimmed to a very good $1500 build as well. Change the CPU to i5 760, remove one of the cards, one of the SSDs, and you'll need lower capacity PSU for that, let's slash $30-$50 there, you get a very good PC for $1500.Reply -
kkiddu And oh, cheapen the case as well. There's no free lunch. You gotta sacrifice some silence to gains some frame rates.Reply