System Builder Marathon, March 2012: $2600 Performance PC
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Page 1:Au Contraire: More CPU, Less GPU
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Page 2:CPU, CPU Cooler, And Memory
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Page 3:Motherboard, Graphics, And Power
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Page 4:SSD, Hard Drive, And Optical Drive
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Page 5:Case And Case Cooling
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Page 6:Hardware Installation
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Page 7:Overclocking A Truly Overclockable Platform
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Page 8:Test Settings And Benchmarks
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Page 9:Benchmark Results: 3DMark And PCMark
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Page 10:Benchmark Results: SiSoftware Sandra
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Page 11:Benchmark Results: Battlefield 3 And DiRT 3
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Page 12:Benchmark Results: Skyrim And StarCraft II
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Page 13:Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
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Page 14:Benchmark Results: Productivity
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Page 15:Power, Heat, And Efficiency
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Page 16:Does The CPU Gamble Pay Off?
Does The CPU Gamble Pay Off?
Most experienced builders are fully aware of what diminishing returns means for aggressive attempts to push higher performance. At a certain point, cost simply goes up way faster than the gains for which you pay. This is a really rough, totally seat-of-the-pants estimate, but we'd venture to say that enthusiast-oriented PCs start to see the relationship between spending more and getting more start to dip off at around the $700 price point.
Today’s build counters that trend by producing 14% better stock-speed performance than last quarter's effort at a 10% higher price.
The value win for our current build is really an indictment of its predecessor, in that too much money was devoted to graphics. The problem was that most of our games couldn’t take full advantage of all that graphics power, whereas more of our productivity and content creation titles certainly benefit from a faster CPU.
Narrowing our focus to high-resolution gaming helps us to define the unbalance, where only high-end gamers could appreciate its graphics configuration. In this context, the old system has a bigger advantage in high-end-gaming value than our new system has in overall value.
Overall value will be the focus of tomorrow's Day 4 comparison, where budgets are sized up against performance. So, so the first value chart takes precedence as we congratulate ourselves for building a system that truly equals the sum of its parts.
- Au Contraire: More CPU, Less GPU
- CPU, CPU Cooler, And Memory
- Motherboard, Graphics, And Power
- SSD, Hard Drive, And Optical Drive
- Case And Case Cooling
- Hardware Installation
- Overclocking A Truly Overclockable Platform
- Test Settings And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark And PCMark
- Benchmark Results: SiSoftware Sandra
- Benchmark Results: Battlefield 3 And DiRT 3
- Benchmark Results: Skyrim And StarCraft II
- Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Does The CPU Gamble Pay Off?
Yes, the parts were ordered around five weeks ago. Tom's Hardware didn't even have a preview sample of the GTX 680 at that time.
Thanks, it was one of the most requested changes from our previous high-priced build.
First and formost, this isn't a gaming machine yet you refer to "Best Gaming CPUs for the Money".
Second, even if someone wanted to call this a gaming machine they'd be left with the realization that 70% of the benchmarks are not games.
Third, the decision to use a six-core SB-E was heavily influenced by the complaints of your fellow readers in the last high-end build, which lacked it. I could have easily picked either CrossFire (to boost around 30% of the benchmarks) or SB-E (for a bigger boost in fewer benchmarks) based on reader requests.
So you're officially nominated to rebut any favorable reader comments concerning the use of an SB-E.
If they keep using the same s*** over and over, what is the point? I just dont get how hard a concept that is for some of the people around here. Read the damn articles before commenting...
You're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't, it seems.
May I point out to some people that the SB-E is a decent step up on the 990X for a good deal cheaper? I could understand the rationale by wanting to go with an overclocked 920 over the 980 and 990 in the past especially considering the $1,000 price tag, but here we're talking a $400 cheaper CPU inside a $2,600 machine which isn't destined to be used only for gaming. Is spending a quarter of the budget on an exceptionally fast CPU which benefits 95% of your work such a waste of money?
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.
Look at Some of the previous articles in regards to the GTX 680 both as a single card and in SLI. I noticed that it just depends on the game (or application). Sometimes the GTX 680 outperforms the AMD 7970, and vice versa. As far as I'm concerned, if I was going to buy either one, I'd pick the GTX 680 because it is priced below the AMD 7970. The only possible caveat to that would be a driver issue, in relation to the OS or the motherboard. For instance, my motherboard (which is 5 years old) from what I've heard, only plays well with NVIDIA cards. I don't know if the same thing is true for PCI-e 3.0 compatible motherboards or not, if some are only compatible with NVIDIA or AMD cards or both.
"Although they sound impressive, those advantages don't necessarily translate into significant performance gains in modern titles. Our tests demonstrate fairly little difference between a $225 LGA 1155 Core i5-2500K and a $1000 LGA 2011 Core i7-3960X, even when three-way graphics card configurations are involved. It turns out that memory bandwidth and PCIe throughput don't hold back the performance of existing Sandy Bridge machines."
So, your argument doesn't sound reasonable in my very humble point of view. If you aim to get a good performance in games, choosing dual 7970s is a no-brainer. Also, the performance gain in multi monitor setups favors the 2 7970s.When you factor in the higher motherboard cost, the value and performance per dollar picture gets even worse.
Yes, the parts were ordered around five weeks ago. Tom's Hardware didn't even have a preview sample of the GTX 680 at that time.
Thanks, it was one of the most requested changes from our previous high-priced build.
First and formost, this isn't a gaming machine yet you refer to "Best Gaming CPUs for the Money".
Second, even if someone wanted to call this a gaming machine they'd be left with the realization that 70% of the benchmarks are not games.
Third, the decision to use a six-core SB-E was heavily influenced by the complaints of your fellow readers in the last high-end build, which lacked it. I could have easily picked either CrossFire (to boost around 30% of the benchmarks) or SB-E (for a bigger boost in fewer benchmarks) based on reader requests.
So you're officially nominated to rebut any favorable reader comments concerning the use of an SB-E.
As Crashman said, this isn't a gaming orientated machine. It was said in the introduction that "Games account for 30% of our evaluation", which is why they put the SB-E processor in it. Putting more money into a better CPU would yield higher overall performance than putting in another 7970 would.
not much of an enthusiast are you
on topic: i just wish they would put popular video editing/encoding software in their benchmarks such as sony vegas which has the option to render videos using just cpu or cpu+gpu which reduces the strain on cpu by alot and makes the night and day difference in encoding speed with mainconcept's avc encoder (my puny gtx460 cuts encoding time off 4ghz i5 760 by 70%, so i can only imagine what happens with a $500+ gpu)
i'm effing tired of people who religiously preach how sufficient i3/i5 is, you know, not everyone uses pc to play mw3
You're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't, it seems.
May I point out to some people that the SB-E is a decent step up on the 990X for a good deal cheaper? I could understand the rationale by wanting to go with an overclocked 920 over the 980 and 990 in the past especially considering the $1,000 price tag, but here we're talking a $400 cheaper CPU inside a $2,600 machine which isn't destined to be used only for gaming. Is spending a quarter of the budget on an exceptionally fast CPU which benefits 95% of your work such a waste of money?
If they keep using the same s*** over and over, what is the point? I just dont get how hard a concept that is for some of the people around here. Read the damn articles before commenting...
Intel Core i5-2550K $230 The money saved from buying this CPU can be put in a 120hz monitor. More GPU processing required, less CPU bottle-neck to worry about.
ASUS P8P67 PRO $160 if you don't mind the rebate.
Noctua NH-D14 $95 (Zalman lol)
SAMSUNG 8GB $48 is a game changer. Once everyone uses 30nm, everything else will be obsolete.
EVGA GTX 680 SLI 508x2= $1,016 when it's available. HD 7970 CF for now. You can add a third just by upgrading the mobo to P67 WS rev for $255
Mushkin Enhanced Chronos SSD 240GB $249 Did tom's pay more for the extra 1 year warranty?
Western Digital Caviar Black 1.5TB $158 although I like your idea that slower RPM is more quite.
LITE-ON 24X DVD Writer $27 As a gamer I don't care for Blue-ray.
SeaSonic Platinum Platinum-860 860W $220 We agree on something
Rosewill THOR V2 $130. 140mm rear Fan, 230mm front fan, 230mm top fan, 230mm side Fan. This case with this config. does not even need dampening to make it quite and it can't be beat cooling-wise. Just have to go through hell building in it
Total: $2,333