System Builder Marathon Q4 2014: Budget Gaming PC

Results: Synthetics

Bear in mind the similarities of these hardware configurations. Both machines sport the same processor, hard drive, and motherboard. Even the UEFI and Driver versions remain the same. Only the graphics card, memory kit, power supply and case have changed. Our current rig has bolstered graphics core frequencies, but otherwise underwent more conservative overclocking measures with power saving features left enabled.

3DMark Pro 2013

Results in 3DMark Fire Strike are predictable given the hardware similarities of these two machines. The Physics scores scale according to processor frequency, while a bolstered GPU bumps up the current machine’s graphics and overall scores.

PCMark 8

The graphics upgrade also surfaces in increased PC Mark 8 scores, where the new machine only suffers a single loss in the Home Test due to a less aggressive CPU overclock.

SiSoftware Sandra

Our two PCs start out averaging the same scores in Sandra’s Processor Arithmetic and Cryptography tests.

But in the end, less tuning results in a two to three percent performance reduction this quarter.

Although we swapped in a different RAM kit this quarter, the two machines still sport the same DDR3-1333 frequencies and main memory timings. So the eight percent reduction seen here in Sandra’s memory bandwidth measurement is unexpected, and also a bit concerning. However, most important is whether or not this deficiency surfaces again in any of our real-world tests.