Our first run of power benchmarks produced some anomalously-low readings. While we usually test graphics power draw using the GPU-punishing FurMark benchmark, we had to revert to our old method of stressing the GPUs with 3DMark Vantage's Perlin Noise benchmark.
As a result, you can see the power draw from the current system is very close to the previous SBM system. This is a bit surprising since the current system is using twice the number of graphics cards.
The Phenom II X4 945 is a cool runner compared to the Core i7-920, especially considering the poor airflow we had to deal with in our previous $1,300 SBM machine and its microATX case.
Summary
- System Builder Marathon: $1,250 AMD System
- Video Cards, Motherboard, And Case
- Power Supply, CPU, And Cooler
- Memory, Hard Drive, And Optical Drive
- Assembly And Overclocking
- Test System And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: Synthetics
- Application Benchmarks: Media Encoding
- Application Benchmarks: 2D And 3D Graphics
- Application Benchmarks: Productivity
- Game Benchmarks: First-Person Shooters
- Game Benchmarks: Real-Time Strategy And Flight Simulator
- Game Benchmarks: RPG
- Power And Temperature Benchmarks
- Conclusion
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