System Builder Marathon, December 2010: $500 PC

Features
By Paul Henningsen
published

Benchmark Results: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 And Crysis

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 offers impressive visuals on modest graphics hardware, and even the stock $400 PC from September had no problem playing at 1080p resolution and the highest detail levels. The current system breezes through all resolutions with a glaringly obvious CPU limitation.

While many folks would find the former Radeon HD 5670 satisfactory, competitive gamers should appreciate the December rig’s ability to maintain 60+ frames per second, even with the added demands of 4x AA.

Crysis

Crysis is more brutal, limiting the former PC to 720p at High details. Sporting far more powerful graphics hardware, the December box is playable at all resolutions, appearing CPU-limited below 1080p.

Note the 10% framerate increase achieved just by narrowing the aspect ratio from 16:9 (1280x720) to 5:4 (1280x1024). This could be of particular interest for a gamer experiencing borderline playability caused by a CPU limitation.

The overclocked Radeon HD 5770 used in the past could not muster playable performance at 1280x1024, so it’s no surprise the $400 rig’s HD 5670 was brought to it’s knees at Very High details.

Our stock December $500 gaming rig also struggles. But once it's overclocked, the machine surpasses our framerate requirements for playable performance at both lower resolutions. Average framerates even appear a bit CPU-limited. But the bottleneck quickly shifts to the GPU, surpassing the machine’s capabilities at 1680x1050 and above.

Paul Henningsen
111 Comments Comment from the forums
  • LuckyDucky7
    And this is really the only PC build that will stay relevant come January- it will remain the only budget platform that can be overclocked, after all.

    Incidentally, this would be the only PC you'd want to contemplate building right now (since the new Core i3s don't come out immediately like the i5s and i7s do- and the Pentium G8XX series doesn't allow overclocking of its platform.)
    Reply
  • Tamz_msc
    Ah, much better than the previous build!
    Reply
  • Proximon
    Great job squeezing everything into a very small budget.
    Reply
  • adbat
    Good build - but again it would be good to see old spec on test system page.
    Reply
  • rohitbaran
    That is a great combination for that budget. Balanced.
    Reply
  • yyk71200
    I wouldn't be very comfortable using a 380 watt PSU for a long time for GTX 460 even if it is good quality. Perhaps, I would put in something of 450 watt or higher.
    Reply
  • Crashman
    LuckyDucky7And this is really the only PC build that will stay relevant come January- it will remain the only budget platform that can be overclocked, after all.Incidentally, this would be the only PC you'd want to contemplate building right now (since the new Core i3s don't come out immediately like the i5s and i7s do- and the Pentium G8XX series doesn't allow overclocking of its platform.)So you think there's going to be a replacement platform for the $2000 PC in January? That's not going to happen for a while. Or are you suggesting the next $2000 PC should be downgraded to P67?
    Reply
  • dragoon190
    I haven't been keeping up with the system marathon much, but what's the reasoning for choosing nVidia card over AMD's? Just wondering since I'm thinking about upgrading my computer soon.
    Reply
  • jj463rd
    A really nice build this time.However the price of the case and power supply has gone up in price over at newegg.I haven't checked the prices of the other components though.This build seems to perform quite well especially in the gaming benchmarks.Good job!
    Reply
  • tstng
    I would've gone with a 6850 instead of the 460. It's a tad cheaper, not at all slower if you don't start cranckin' up the tesselation, and should fit the 380W psu a lot better. But a solid build by all means.
    Reply