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System Builder Marathon, December 2010: $2000 PC

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With all of your feedback from last quarter's System Builder Marathon under our belts, this time around, we attempt to fit a no-sacrifice, luxury and performance build into our moderately-high $2000 budget. Will this new build succeed on all fronts?

Benchmark Results: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call Of Pripyat

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat benchmark isn’t as hobbled by the new system’s poor memory performance as other games were, showing losses for the current base system only at the lower test setting with our two lowest resolutions. Overclocking helps!

Adding AA makes graphics power the bigger bottleneck, allowing the current system’s more-powerful graphics processors to lead at all resolutions and system clocks.

131 Comments Comment from the forums
  • amk09 13 December 2010 12:13
    The link to enter the giveaway doesn't work!

    I would love to be first to enter :)
    Reply
  • micr0be 13 December 2010 12:18
    i think im gona get a revo 2 drive ssd to upgrade my current build.... all thanks to santa !!
    Reply
  • Tamz_msc 13 December 2010 12:31
    Its good to know that choosing the wrong memory can affect performance in such a way.
    Reply
  • fstrthnu 13 December 2010 12:49
    I'm pretty surprised we didn't see Geforce GTX 570s in this build, I guess they got released too late to make it here.
    Reply
  • fstrthnu 13 December 2010 12:57
    >> First time in recent memory
    "Cough Cough" Lame Pun
    Reply
  • jerreece 13 December 2010 13:01
    Wow that Mushkin memory really jacked up this benchmark.
    Reply
  • kkiddu 13 December 2010 13:10
    Most perfect build ever ? Just read the configs yet, and I think that's a possibility.

    Now don't skin me if the config proves to be a flop in the coming pages. Just read the first page and couldn't resist a comment.
    Reply
  • hemburger 13 December 2010 13:16
    Why not replace the two ssd's with a single intel 120gb... same price and now on 35nm
    Reply
  • kkiddu 13 December 2010 13:17
    I think this one can be trimmed to a very good $1500 build as well. Change the CPU to i5 760, remove one of the cards, one of the SSDs, and you'll need lower capacity PSU for that, let's slash $30-$50 there, you get a very good PC for $1500.
    Reply
  • kkiddu 13 December 2010 13:23
    And oh, cheapen the case as well. There's no free lunch. You gotta sacrifice some silence to gains some frame rates.
    Reply