System Builder Marathon, Q2 2013: System Value Compared

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Results: Adobe CS6

When Adobe After Effects is presented with a large number of physical and logical cores, it needs lots of system memory to allocate to each one. Because my Core i7 gives the application eight threads, I used this benchmark as an excuse to drop two 8 GB modules into my little $2500 machine. The experiment appears to pay off, and the priciest machine achieves the best performance.

Photoshop appears to prefer my system’s dual-GPU graphics card in its OpenCL test.

Premiere’s preference for expensive processors reflects the small but noticeable boost we’ve seen in a few other applications able to benefit from Hyper-Threading. The $2500 machine’s CPU is also clocked the highest, accounting for part of its lead.

A productivity application that’s associated with Adobe’s creativity suite, our PowerPoint-to-PDF conversion workload using Acrobat X is decidedly single-threaded. Nevertheless, Don's overclocked Core i5 secures a win even in light of its less aggressive frequency.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
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38 Comments Comment from the forums
  • swordrage
    Finally some builds that cost nearly the same in my country India. Thanks..
    Reply
  • manitoublack
    Great to see M-ITX in a SBM. The days of needing a full sized ATX are mostly over for 90% of people. M-ATO or M-ITX is the way forward.
    Reply
  • slomo4sho
    The extra $1200 from the $1300 doesn't add much value in this form factor.
    Reply
  • DarkSable
    Sigh. This is why I really, really dislike the system builder marathons; they do nothing but perpetuate the fallacies that already are far too common.

    Someone looking at just this article, which isn't that unlikely, would be lead to believe that an i7 is something that an "ultimate" gaming computer has, that an expensive motherboard helps, and that a $2500 PC is going to be far better than a $1500 one.
    Reply
  • slomo4sho
    11041161 said:
    Sigh. This is why I really, really dislike the system builder marathons; they do nothing but perpetuate the fallacies that already are far too common.

    Someone looking at just this article, which isn't that unlikely, would be lead to believe that an i7 is something that an "ultimate" gaming computer has, that an expensive motherboard helps, and that a $2500 PC is going to be far better than a $1500 one.

    They really should include performance per dollar figures in this writeup.
    Reply
  • DarkSable
    11041186 said:
    They really should include performance per dollar figures in this writeup.

    For the parts, or for the computers themselves? Either would be nice, actually.

    One thing that would go a long way is stressing how wonky their testing is - most people reading this as advice for building a computer are going to be building a gaming computer purely, rendering 70% of the test bench pointless.
    Reply
  • slicedtoad
    I still don't like the bf3 benchmarks. They in no way represent the online experience and really, people that play bf3 spend at least 95% of their time on mp. I realize it's nearly impossible to generate a fair benchmark for online play but the current benchmarks are very misleading.

    And I'm not griping at tom's, all review sites seem to do this. There should be some way to create a better benchmark. Maybe host a custom server and load it up with scripted "players" or something.
    Reply
  • allanitomwesh
    Cheaper is better basically :) Where's that $400 rig?
    Reply
  • Achoo22
    11041210 said:
    most people reading this as advice for building a computer are going to be building a gaming computer purely, rendering 70% of the test bench pointless.

    I feel like they've modified the benchmarking suite to favor AMD as much as possible.
    Reply
  • slomo4sho
    11041382 said:
    I feel like they've modified the benchmarking suite to favor AMD as much as possible.

    And when was the last time an AMD CPU made it into a SBM? Modifying benchmarks to favor a product that is never showcased is a moot point.
    Reply