Benchmark Results: World In Conflict And Supreme Commander
The $625 system, with its E7300, maintains an average above 30 FPS in World in Conflict, which is probably good enough for most RTS gamers. If not, overclocking brings those average frame rates up above 40 FPS.
With AA and anisotropic filtering (AF) cranked up, we once again see our overclocked machine yielding solid gains. However, it looks like many gamers would want to lower to 2x AA as resolution is raised.
Even overclocked, the $625 system still barely manages to break 20 FPS at these demanding Forged Alliance settings. As in Crysis, it would be unrealistic to expect such high settings from a machine with this price range. However, the overclocked PC does manage a huge boost at 1920x1200.
With 4xAA enabled, results are, as expected, far worse. The increase in percentage from overclocking is again inflated by huge gains at 1920x1200, but without any level of playability, it’s fairly meaningless anyway.
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First(s) I'd like to say thanks, for the review... Ah yes, once again OC'ing proves the nay-sayers the fools we've always known they are: "Well why don't you take that money spent on fans and get a better CPU?" LMFAO be quiet and stick with Dells and the other mass-produced JUNK...
I'm a little curious about the way you determine your ram selection (aside from price)? Doesn't really seem like a "top end," aka: Corsair, Geil, OCZ, Kingston, Mushkin etc?
What thermal paste are you using in this test also? That is a CRUCIAL determining factor in your OC'ing results. 5-10C can make or break a top-end OC.
What about replacing the stock TIM on the GPU-sink? Everyone knows that stock "paste" is pure garbage, along with the extremely inefficient TIM-type "cloth" they use on the ram-chips b/c of poor engineering tolerances aka, huge GAPS between the chip and sink. I took apart my old 7800GS+ and was shocked at the ~2mm gap that was "filled" (smashed) with this white-ish-paste-cloth type TIM gunk?! Id rather have thermal pads in place of that mess... anyhow using IC7 Diamond/AS5—I've seen min 15C-20C drops in GPU Load temps! That's certainly an eye-opening temp drop. And definitely going to yield a better OC, even for the say of stability and hardware longevity...Anyhow thanks 4 the review!
Overall a good build, though a bit CPU-heavy and PSU-light for this level. Surprised at the OCd GPUs stability given the low-rated PSU - is that one of the newer Delta-built 430W Antecs? The older Seasonic 430W PSUs are generally considered one of the least effective aftermarket Antec PSUs and more often get bundled with (now obsolete/EoL) desktop/high-end-HTPC (Fusion) cases.
I do see a pattern though... despite the hype, Intel's mid-binned 45nm parts (E7000/Q8000) seem to suffer serious stability issues at moderate and high OC. Given that Intel's safety spec says that 45nm CPUs will start to die beyond 1.3625v and that many enthusiasts will think twice about running such parts beyond the 1.4225v mark I do think that its pretty cheeky that Toms ran the benchmarks above with a CPU barely hanging in there at a whopping 1.4875v, which is also beyond the limit Toms was supposed to use (1.45v).
And it wasn't even that much use, other than proving that the extra L2 cache probably isn't worth the money to the more cash-strapped gamers. A lot of the improvement in gaming benchmarks can instead be put down to the much improved drivers added to the fact that Toms was much more adventurous with OCing this time around (its the same Sapphire Value HD4850 as the last SBM!).
v12v12 - Patriot are a good high-end RAM supplier... in the US. Less well known and more expensive over here. OCZ modules would be more par the course for Europe. And those Sapphire Value cards are cheap because of an outrageously non-reference architecture. That's why ATT won't work on them. They also leave out heatspreaders on anything except the voltage regulators - a good decision, as you said they're more of a hinderance on anything other than hot-running power circuitry (like the regs) so Sapphire leaves the bare RAM chips just under the fan. Not just for cost - several tests suggested that those modules ran cooler and clocked higher than identical ones on other competing HD4830/50s that used discrete heatspreaders or the integrated heatspeader on the reference design slot-cooler.
again another good build but i have bg problem with em, they are on the U.K sit, i would liek to see a U.K one done, i know this will probly not be taken note of but it is hard to ind the samecompants at the equiv price here
but still great as usual =D
As above, we could really do with these done on UK sites/shops. Scan for example or Overclockers UK.....