System Builder Marathon: Day 4

3D Games

3D mark shows a huge jump going from low-cost to mid-priced components, but the high-end system really shines at ultra-high resolutions.

This is all about the graphics processors, folks, and it shows. Unlike the rest of the benchmarks, the gaming tests rely so heavily on the video card that the platform's influence is reduced to a fraction of what it is in everything else.

Doom 3 only requires high-end performance for ultra high resolutions: Even the low-budget build was able to play relatively smoothly at 1600x1200 pixels with 4x Anti-Aliasing and 8x Anisotropic Filtering enabled. Top value for typically used resolutions goes to the budget build! Remember that Doom 3 depends heavily on CPU performance.