SBM 3: High-End System

Benchmark Results

Our former system used two factory-overclocked XFX 8800GTX graphics cards in SLI mode, which were on loan from a third party. Today's system uses two standard-speed 8800GTX cards from Gigabyte, which raises an important question: can other improvements still boost the current system's gaming power?

3D Games

Doom 3 sees significant gains from the faster processor, where even the mighty Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 CPU appears to be the bottleneck at every tested resolution!

F.E.A.R. gets a performance boost from the faster CPU at most resolutions, where the higher-clocked graphics cards of the previous system only begin to catch up at 1600x1200 with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled.

Oblivion pulls graphics performance to its knees, so who would have thought the current system's faster CPU could have so much impact?