Conclusion
We put together our previous SBM build before the GeForce GTX 970 was available for sale, and it's something of a no-brainer that it made it into our final midrange build of 2014. While it is disappointing that we weren't able to provide overclocked results out of the gate, let's see what story the stock results can tell us:
Aside from application performance, the new build bests the previous (and more-expensive) system builder marathon midrange enthusiast machine. This is thanks to the GeForce GTX 970, a card that we called out for being a game changer at the sub-$350 price range on its introduction. Here's some validation of that:
A closer inspection of gaming performance at 1920x1080 and triple-monitor 4800x900 shows just how much the GeForce GTX 970 brings to the table. Even at stock clocks, the new build doesn't need any help trumping the GeForce GTX 770-equipped overclocked machine.
Despite our lack of overclocked results on the new hardware, it will be interesting to see how the stock results compare to Paul Henningsen's budget PC efforts along with Thomas Soderstrom's high-end entry in our wrap-up article, which will be posted on Tom's Hardware over the next few days. Keep a close eye on our site over the holidays!
