Benchmark Results: Professional Applications
Although 3ds Max is able to take advantage of all six cores, it doesn't respond to clock rate as aggressively (thought here is unquestionably significant benefit to running faster). The good news is that, in an application like this one, you don't have to push an overclock as hard as possible to get the best balance between performance and efficiency; simply bringing a six-core CPU to bear is the biggest speed-adder.
Pursuing the highest possible overclock also yields more performance in After Effects. But it's almost certainly not the most efficient way to go.
Photoshop CS 5.1 is a major graphics program, even if its steep price means few folks can afford to always be running the latest version. Our scripted benchmark sequence employs threaded filters that benefit most from parallelism.
As we can see, though, increasing clock rate helps as well. Once you reach the upper bounds of our overclock, additional frequency isn't as effective.
Blender models, texturizes, animates, and renders 3D objects. It also benefits noticeably from overclocking.