System Builder Marathon, Dec. 2009: $2,500 Performance PC

Benchmark Results: Productivity

Encoding a single HD animation frame in 27 seconds is fairly typical of a machine in this price class, but the 22-second completion time when overclocked is respectable.

Here’s a fun fact: our current build completed AVG Virus Scan in less time than the former build did, even though the former build was scanning super-fast SSD drives. Notice, however, that overclocking our current build provides the lowest performance gains in single- and double-threaded applications, since our overclock settings also disabled the high single- and dual-core Intel Turbo Boost multipliers.

An update of both WinRAR and WinZip makes it impossible to accurately compare current and former results.

Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.