3D Studio Max was the only benchmark in our Productivity suite to run under the Vista x64 operating system of October's $4,500 build, because our custom benchmark files were written exclusively for 32-bit operating systems. The remaining benchmarks are the primary reason why our $2,500 PC was limited to a 32-bit friendly 3.0 GB of RAM, but the lack of previous results forces our new system to stand alone in those tests.
3D Studio Max loves the Core i7 architecture, making the highly-overclocked $4,500 Core 2 system look slow by comparison.
CPU overclocking provided the biggest benefits in Photoshop and Winzip. Virus scanners are often limited by hard drive speed, and the smaller difference between overclocked and stock speeds when using RAM Drive are probably indicative of our smaller memory overclock.
- Upgrading To First Class…On The Cheap
- CPU, CPU Cooler, And RAM
- Motherboard, Graphics, And Hard Drives
- Case, Power, And Optical Drive
- Accessories And Assembly
- Overclocking
- Test Settings
- Benchmark Results: First-Person Shooters
- Benchmark Results: Real-Time Strategy
- Benchmark Results: Audio/Video Encoding
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Benchmark Results: Synthetics
- Power Consumption
- Conclusion
