System Builder Marathon: Low-Cost System

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Application Benchmarks - 2d And 3d Rendering

The first image rendering benchmark we'll have a look at is the Photoshop CS3 benchmark where 6 complex filters are applied to a large 96 MB TIFF.

The low-cost system finishes the benchmark in exactly 3 minutes. It will be interesting to see how quickly the mid-range and high-end systems perform the same task.

Next we examine 3d rendering speeds with 3dStudio MAX 9 and Cinema 4d.

We can say from personal experience that this result is almost 50% faster than the dual core E6750 performs on a test machine in the lab. It is known that 3dsMAX is multithread-optimized so having four CPU cores really helped the Phenom 9500 in this benchmark, and the quad-core Phenom really shines as the heart of a low-cost PC in applications such as 3dsMAX.

The low-cost system renders the scene in just over 3 minutes. Once again, we patiently wait for the mid-range and high-end results for comparison.

Don Woligroski
2 Comments Comment from the forums
  • romulus47plus1
    Paying $230 for a 3870?
    Get the 8800GT for that price!
    Reply
  • Retrogame
    The $500-$700 system is more important than you realize: it's an extremely important price point in the "Consoles vs. PC wars"

    For about $500, you can buy a top of the line current generation PS3 or XBox 360 with a few accessories.

    Of course, there are always games better on one platform than the other; and naturally, your PC is a lot more versatile; i.e. it's a "REAL COMPUTER!" Even so, it's nice to know that you can actually put together a low cost machine, overclock it a smidgen, and still run this games representative of this year's crop of PC titles... and if you were to actually scale down the graphics settings to the same level that the consoles would be running things at, probably end up with better frame rates and the advantage of using a nice monitor instead of a TV.
    Reply