System Builder Marathon: Low-Cost System

Synthetic Benchmarks

We start with the customary 3dMark 2006 benchmark from Futuremark, the de-facto standard synthetic benchmark for gaming:

3dMark 2006 gives us good reason to be optimistic. These scores are nothing to scoff at for a low-cost build, and the system doesn't fall on its face at high resolutions. It even scales well to 1920x1200 with no AA or AF enabled, although when these features are turned on it does struggle a bit at the highest resolutions.

Let's have a look at Futuremark's other well-known benchmark, PC Mark 2005, which benchmarks other aspects of PC performance in addition to graphics:

These results are particularly difficult to speak to in isolation, but we can say that we've personally seen more expensive systems deliver similar results.

Let's move on to SiSoft's Sandra XII benchmark suite:

Like PC Mark, Sandra results don't look like much by themselves. These will be much more impactful when compared to the other test systems later in the week.

With synthetics out of the way, let's cover the application benchmarks.