System Builder Marathon: Overclocking

Benchmark Results

3D Games

The overclocked high-end configuration starts off with huge performance gains at low resolutions in Crysis, but nobody wants to limit themselves to low resolutions on a $3400 machine. The 3-way SLI configuration eventually passes the dual-card overclocked system at high resolutions, but not by enough to justify the added expense.

Cranking up the details to the "very high" presets and enabling anti-aliasing puts the 3-way configuration in a much better light, as it's the only way our system was playable (if barely) at the native resolution of a 24" flat panel display.

Prey puts such a light load on our high-end hardware that neither 3-way SLI nor overclocking is needed. Big gains at low resolutions don't matter when you can't actually see the difference.

Even at the game's highest texture settings and 4x AA, Prey doesn't stand a prayer at bringing down the high-end system.