System Builder Marathon: Overclocking

Synthetics

Without anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering, the overclocked system stands around 20% higher in 3D Mark 2006 than the 3-way SLI configuration. Meanwhile, 3-way only gained 4% over the stock-speed 2-way settings.

Enabling 4x AA and 8x AF lets the 3-way SLI configuration take a big lead at high 3D Mark resolutions, but the overclocked system's bigger lead at lower resolutions gives it a slightly higher average score.

We've limited our 3-way SLI tests to graphics benchmarks thus far, but PC Mark 2005's system test contains a graphics element. The overclocked configuration leads by 28% overall, while the 3-way configuration gains less than 1%.

PC Mark reads the increased CPU speed appropriately, handing the overclocked system a 44% win.

Higher front-side-bus and RAM speeds in the overclocked configuration benefit PC Mark by around 30%.