System Builder Marathon, March 2012: $2600 Performance PC
Benchmark Results: SiSoftware Sandra
Most Tom’s Hardware System Builder Marathon benchmarks are CPU-bottlenecked, and the benefits of Intel’s six-core Sandy Bridge-E architecture are most easily quantified using SiSoftware's Sandra.
Amazingly, a 50% increase in core count yields a 66%-higher Sandra Arithmetic score. Even if the average gain in real-world testing is only half as large, we’ll still have a real winner in the new build.
The $2600 build's Arithmetic performance advantage is repeated in Sandra's Multimedia metric.
Quad-channel memory delivers, not surprisingly, roughly twice the throughput of a dual-channel controller in our comparison of this quarter's build to what came before. The previous configuration had the advantage of lower latencies to keep it from falling a full 50% behind, while today's machine, overclocked, has the advantage of higher data rates to push its bandwidth more than 100% above its predecessor.
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llguitargr8 Just curious, did you guys purchase all these parts and right these articles before the GTX 680 was released? I really thought you guys would have gone with that, and if it wasn't because they weren't available at the time, then what makes the 7970 better in your opinion?Reply -
g-unit1111 Not sure if I agree with that choice of cooler but I definitely like the rest of the setup!Reply -
bystander llguitargr8Just curious, did you guys purchase all these parts and right these articles before the GTX 680 was released? I really thought you guys would have gone with that, and if it wasn't because they weren't available at the time, then what makes the 7970 better in your opinion?Almost all these build articles are based on purchases that took place 2 months ago. Even if they were to have bought these parts today, it would be hard to purchase a 680, as stock is a major issue.Reply -
esrever I like the build except the x79 adds like $500 extra that I see very little benefit from.Reply -
e56imfg Dang I need to win this one!! I'm so happy they balanced the CPU with the GPU this time around.Reply -
hmp_goose Good job: Working through the details of the CPU cooler like that is half the fun of this hobby. Great build.Reply -
theuniquegamer Good build . But there could be more improvement by replacing a $600 cpu and $320 mother board with a i7 2600k and a $200 z68 mother board . And also replacing the 7970($590) with 2x680 at 2x$500(from the money saved from cpu and motherboard and 7970). It may give better gaming result than this build.Reply