System Builder Marathon Q2 2015: $1600 Performance PC

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This month’s high-end build looks lighter than its predecessor, yet includes a six-core Haswell-E CPU. Will the shift away from graphics kill its gaming cred?

Synthetics

The extra CPU cores won’t help in 3DMark’s overall score or graphics test, though we do see noticeable improvements in this build’s Physics score. Otherwise, its weaker graphics register a 3DMark loss.

PCMark highlights slightly better SSD performance, while Sandra shows off the gains of the new build’s six-core CPU and quad-channel memory controller. Arithmetic scores are up only slightly, bandwidth scores gain wildly, and the encoding/decoding cycle in Cryptography falls in the middle due to its dependence on memory bandwidth.

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.