System Builder Marathon, August 2012: $500 Gaming PC

By Paul Henningsen
published

Performance Summary And Efficiency

Performance Summary

We welcome the 24% performance increase Intel's Pentium G860 added to our media encoding and productivity applications, though we also understand that neither test suite is a strong point of today's build. Simply put, each and every time we outfit our gaming PC with a dual-core processor, we sacrifice its alacrity in those disciplines.

Of course, we can’t deny the amazing per-clock performance of Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture, or the fact few games know what to do with quad-core CPUs. Even locked at 3 GHz, this chip does make sense for budget-minded gamers. The Celeron G530 previously showed itself to be adequate in our gaming suite. But this quarter's average frame rates at all resolutions jumped 16% thanks to our Pentium (and despite a less-powerful graphics card).

Efficiency

Consuming, on average, 11% less energy, while delivering a 21% boost in overall performance, this quarter's machine strikes out with a crushing win in efficiency.

Graphics overclocking provided a needed frame rate boost at certain key settings. However, the additional voltage and clock rate ate up power, taking a sizeable bite out of the tweaked configuration’s overall efficiency.

Paul Henningsen
160 Comments Comment from the forums
  • crisan_tiberiu
    so, looks like 500$ (Euro in europe :P) its enaugh to play any modern game that is trown on the market... ty consoles :P
    Reply
  • itzsnypah
    I think it would be interesting if next quarter for your Budget PC you try to bring the performance per watt as high as you can while still maintaining an enjoyable gaming experience. Something like a G620+HD7750/70 with a high efficiency PSU such as Rosewill CAPSTONE 450.

    Ever since I read the 7950B/7970GE review on here/anand performance per watt for me has been a priority when selecting components.
    Reply
  • mayankleoboy1
    I think it would be interesting if next quarter for your Budget PC you try to bring the performance per watt as high as you can while still maintaining an enjoyable gaming experience. Something like a G620+HD7750/70 with a high efficiency PSU such as Rosewill CAPSTONE 450.

    On the contrary, for a 500$ build, energy consumption and heat should be least concerns. Tweaking, overclocking and extracting the last possible performance from your hardware are the primary concerns of a 500$ gaming build. Even after HEAVY overclocking, you wont get 50W over the stock settings.
    Reply
  • sam_fisher
    mayankleoboy1On the contrary, for a 500$ build, energy consumption and heat should be least concerns. Tweaking, overclocking and extracting the last possible performance from your hardware are the primary concerns of a 500$ gaming build. Even after HEAVY overclocking, you wont get 50W over the stock settings.
    One may presume that someone after a $500 build is on a budget and hence doesn't want higher power consumption from overclocking.
    Reply
  • yyk71200
    Well, considering that I already have 3570K with GTX570, I'll be interested only in either $2000 PC or a graphic card from a $1000 PC.
    Reply
  • loops
    At least I can take less heat for recommending b75 mobo...
    Reply
  • itzsnypah
    mayankleoboy1On the contrary, for a 500$ build, energy consumption and heat should be least concerns. Tweaking, overclocking and extracting the last possible performance from your hardware are the primary concerns of a 500$ gaming build. Even after HEAVY overclocking, you wont get 50W over the stock settings.According to the performance summary and efficiency page of this article Overclocking the GPU had a 13%(average according to this article) increase in power consumption for an extra 2% (average) performance. That seems like the opposite thing I'm talking about.

    Overclocking is good for performance per dollar, not performance per watt.
    Reply
  • abegnale
    @Paul Henningsen,
    Why not substitute some existing parts for either an I3-2100 and/or an eVGA 560 Superclocked?
    Reply
  • giovanni86
    Nice, looking forward to the next builds. Some times OC does yield its advantages, those few frames can help and have helped me in games running smoothly or just over 30FPS. I honestly don't see why people are concerned with power, PC's don't cost much to run even overclocked. Unless your poor or working at McDonald's, then i see no reason why power is an issue unless otherwise stated. This whole green thing is a pain in the ass. I'm power hungry sorry.
    Reply
  • mayankleoboy1
    ^ there are no existing parts. This is a new build :)
    Reply