The Results
Synthetics
3DMark & PCMark
3DMark rewards Eric’s expensive graphics card and my own expensive CPU, while also showing Chris’ combo as equally viable to Eric’s in its overall score. As our own benchmark suite also produces overall scores, I evidently don’t stand a chance.
PCMark rewards Chris’ use of an SSD, while also giving my machine high work and home scores for its exceptional CPU. Unfortunately, only the storage score is used in our final evaluation.
SiSoftware Sandra
My Core i5-6600K reigns triumphant over Sandra’s Arithmetic and Cryptography benchmarks, while Eric’s low-cost Athlon X4 860K puts a good show in Arithmetic alone. The competition heats up!
And then there’s Sandra Memory Bandwidth. I used to go after Don on the overclocking configuration for not even attempting to push his RAM, yet this time I actually purchased RAM that wouldn’t. That’s why I left well enough alone concerning Chris’ configuration. As for Eric, his lower-end memory controller was still capable of some O/C optimization.
Gaming
Arma 3 & Battlefield 4
Arma 3 appears CPU-limited at our lowest test setting, giving my entry-level GPU a rare chance to top Chris’ mainstream and Eric’s high-end parts. CPU limitations remain in effect for the AMD Athlon build through 1920x1080. Chris’ medium-GPU/medium-CPU combo take the lead at triple-screen resolutions, but only at standard quality settings. Eric’s big GPU finally pays for itself at high resolutions, but only with “Ultra” quality enabled.
Battlefield 4 gives Eric’s GPU a far greater workout, nearly ignoring the poor IPC of his CPU. Gaming PC is starting to look like a misnomer for Chris’ build.
Far Cry 3 & Grid 2
Eric’s GTX 970 takes all comers in Far Cry 3, though its lead surprisingly disappears at Ultra quality and 4800x900 and returns at 5760x1080. My Prosumer PC falls far behind both of the other machines with its entry-level gaming card, while the Gaming PC splits the difference at triple-screen resolutions.
High quality is a fairly low GPU load in Grid 2, and the game becomes DRAM-bottlenecked, then CPU-bottlenecked, before finally leaning harder on the graphics card in triple-screen resolutions. I’ll gladly add the low-end wins to my overall score, just as Eric compiles all of his his triple-screen, ultra-quality wins.
Applications
Encoding & Creativity
We know that the dual-core i3 in Chris’ Gaming PC has better IPC than the quad-core Athlon in Eric’s machine, yet we’re still surprised that the higher-clocked quad-core wins only one video encoding benchmark. As for audio encoding, it’s single-threaded and thus favors both higher clocks and higher IPC, giving the Prosumer PC a win.
Chris’ dual-core gaming PC beats up Eric’s quad-core even in Photoshop OpenCL, where he might have hoped the GTX 970 would help. Shifting our attention to processors of similar IPC, my true quad-core Prosumer PC barely outpaces the virtual quad-cores of Chris’ Gaming machine in Adobe After Effects.
Productivity & File Compression
Adobe Acrobat is single-threaded, so my faster clock barely outpaces Chris’ slower clock, and Eric’s faster clock can’t compensate his lower IPC processor design. I was hoping Eric’s Mini PC would outpace the Gaming PC in 3ds Max, but it can’t.
Chris was the only builder to use an SSD, and it paid off with a surprisingly large win in 7-Zip.
Power & Heat
I built my Prosumer PC for efficiency whilst seeking the lowest cost high-end power supply, as well as compensating for the effect of graphics heat on CPU temperature within a poorly-ventilated case. Eric had similar thoughts, choosing a lower wattage Nvidia card over a similarly high-end AMD part. Chris went all in, yet still kept power consumption low with a dual-core processor. When the electric bill arrives, everyone wins!
An exceptionally high CPU overclock heated up my core, while a tight chassis heated up Eric’s GPU. Though a better case helped Chris’ Gaming PC remain cool on both fronts, but his middling overall performance and power consumption kept his efficiency in the middle position.
