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System Builder Marathon: Overclocking

01:10 - Wednesday 2 July 2008 by Thomas Soderstrom and Shelton Romhanyi, Don Woligroski

1. Introduction
2. Overclocking the Sub-$4000 PC
3. $4000 PC OC Performance: Crysis, Prey
4. Supreme Commander, UT3, Warhammer
5. Audio, Video
6. Applications
7. Synthetics
8. Synthetics, Continued
9. Overclocking the Sub-$2000 PC
10. Synthetic Benchmarks
11. Application Benchmarks – Media Encoding
12. Application Benchmarks – 2d and 3d Rendering

13. Application Benchmarks – Productivity
14. Game Benchmarks – first person shooters
15. Game Benchmarks – first person shooters, cont’d
16. Game Benchmarks – real-time strategy
17. Overclocking the Sub-$1000 PC
18. $1000 PC OC Performance: Crysis, Prey
19. Supreme Commander, UT3, Warhammer
20. Audio, Video
21. Applications
22. Synthetics
23. Synthetics, Continued
24. Comparing Our Efforts

After several days of system descriptions and basic testing, we reach the most anticipated portion of this month’s System Builder Marathon: The Overclocking Competition. All three of our new builds are purposely designed to offer the best overclocking performance for the dollar, and this is almost certain to provide the biggest gains to the slowest processor. Yet excessive cooling provides a glimmer of hope for our most expensive system, and that’s where we’re starting this month.

But before we move to individual system details, here’s a look at the one constant for all systems, the benchmark set.

Benchmarks and Settings
	3D-Games
Crysis	Version: 1.1
	Video Quality 1: High Details No Anti-Aliasing
	Video Quality 2: Very High Details, 4x Anti-Aliasing
	Benchmark: Benchmark_CPU.bat
Prey	Version: 1.3
	Video Quality 1: Default (No AA, 8x AF)
	Video Quality 2: High Quality, 4x AA
	Benchmark: THG-Demo
Supreme	Version: 3.220
Commander	Video Quality 1: Default
	Video Quality 2: High Fidelity, High Shadow, 4x AA
	Benchmark: Real 60 Game
Unreal	Version: Retail
Tournament 3	Texture Detail: 5
	World Detail: 5
	Field of View: 100
	Benchmark: Botmatch (WAR-Torlan, 12 bots, 1 Minute)
Warhammer	Version: 1.6
Mark of Chaos	Video Quality:Default (Highest Settings)
	Demo: THG Timedemo (1 Minute)
	Audio
iTunes 7.2	Version: 7.1.1.5
	Audio CD "Terminator II SE", 53 min
	High Quality (160kb/s)
Lame MP3	Version: 3.98 Beta 3 (05-22-2007)
	Audio CD "Terminator II SE", 53 min
	wave to MP3
	160kb/s
	Video
TMPEGEnc	Version: 4.2.10.211
4.0 Xpress	Import File: Terminator 2 SE DVD (5 Minutes)
	Resolution: 720x576 (PAL) 16:9
	Audio: Dolby Digital, 48000 Hz, 6-Channel, English
	Advanced Acoustic Engine MP3 Encoder (160kb/s)
DivX 6.6	Version: 6.6.1
	Profile: Home Theater Profile (720 x 576)
	1-pass, 780 kb/s
	Encoding mode: Insane Quality
	Enhanced multithreading
XviD 1.1.2	Version: 1.1.2
	Target quantizer: 1.00 (maximum quality)
	Applications
Adobe	Version: 10.0x20070321
Photoshop CS3	Filtering 69MB TIF Photo
	Benchmark: Tom’s Guide-Benchmark V1.0.0.4
Autodesk	Version: 9.0
3D Studio Max	Rendering One Video Frame
	Quality: HTDV 1920x1080 & 1280x720
Grisoft AVG	Version: 7.5.467
Anti-Virus	Virus Base: 269.6.1/776
	Benchmark: Scanning 3.82GB Application Folder
Maxon	Version: 10.008
Cinema 4D	Resolution: 1280 x 1024
	Benchmark: Rose Drop, 8-bits (50 Frames)
Rarlab Winrar	Version 3.70 BETA 8
	Compression = Best
	Dictionary = 4096 kB
	Uncompressed Folder Size: 642MB
	Synthetics
SPECviewperf 9	Version: 9.0.3
PCMark05 Pro	Version: 1.1.0
	System, CPU and Memory Tests
	Windows Media Player 11.0.6000.6324
	Windows Media Encoder 9.00.00.2980
Futuremark	Version 1.10
3DMark 2006	System Test Only
SiSoftware	Version 2008.1.12.30
Sandra XII	CPU Test = CPU Arithmetic, Multimedia
	Memory Test = Bandwidth Benchmark