System Builder Marathon Q3 2014: System Value Compared

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Agree with your conclusions. My personal experience on intel dual cores back it up. the performance drop off from a true quad core is far too extreme to justify the saved money. While it might give you great bang for your buck, the tradeoffs are just too extreme if you plan to use it for more then just a steambox.
 
All three machines in this quarter's SBM were well-devised and well-executed IMHO. All three are similar to what I might build for myself at similar budgets.
The first I think I'd build as an uncle-nephew project, then he and his sisters would have an excellent homework machine that would be capable of some fun too.
Either the second or third I'd mix and match with some of my own parts, but their platforms would become my new primary machine, just to update what I've got. I'd love to win any of them.
 
I think to spice things up their next build-off should make static one item...like the CPU, and then have them all build low, middle and high end systems around that item. And spice it up by going either Intel or AMD. The whole "Don't include items which don't affect performance" should be thrown out the door and include stuff like that. I mean when I build a system I have to take everything into account, not just the juicy bits.
 
It's past time to get rid of 1600x900 and make 1920x1080 the base line resolution. Also you guys need to add 2560x1440, it is starting to become the new norm. My high school son and I do not now anybody who uses 1600x900. He says it is old fashion tech for desktops.
 
If one were thinking of building a Haswell-E-Based system instead (X99 motherboard, 5820K CPU and DDR4 RAM), what would be the performance and price difference?

Thanks.
 
The new norm? We all have 2560x1600 displays and were told to quit using them because they were outdated. They don't support 2560x1440 though, and "it's the new norm" is not going to convince everyone to buy new hardware to enable the downgrade from 2560x1600 to 2560x1440. Eventually we'll all upgrade to 4k displays, it's just not needed for everyone yet.

Conversely, 1600x900 and 1280x720 ARE able to run on 1920x1080 displays.

Nobody thinks you're using a 1600x900 display. 1600x900 is a backup resolution for people who want to run 1920x1080 with super-high quality, but find that their graphics card is too weak. Options for a slightly-underpowered graphics card are to set 1600x900, which looks good on a 1920x1080 display, or to use lower quality settings. If you're not geek enough to know that, you've no room to complain.

The motherboard would cost around $120 more, the CPU $50 more, and the DRAM at least $50 more to reach slightly lower overall performance rating (DDR4-2133 CAS 16, for example). The added threads would allow faster encoding and compiling times in roughly 20% of the tests, while lower clock rate would cause slower performance in nearly all the other tests. We'd probably be lucky to break even on this benchmark set, while spending more money.

 
For what I need today... Just a p3 1000mhz will be fine to me. the 600us machine its perfect fine to me. With mantle and direct x 12 i will never spend again 360us on one processor. I will get a pentium g3258 and a 390x. I miss the old days with the e7300 Oc at 5.0ghz
 
crashman 1080x720? I think you meant 1280x720 which will display on a 2560x1440 monitor along with 1600x900 and 1920x1080. Who is telling you to get rid of your monitor? I know it is possible to display 1600x900 on a 1920x1080 monitor, if you read my post it only says the resolution and does not specify a monitor. I added the last sentence because I thought it was funny what he thinks is old tech. He is always asking me about the olden days back in the 80's. Anyways most people I know are wanting to, or already have upgraded to a 1440 monitor that's why I said the new norm.
Thanks for not thinking of me as a geek now go tell that to my ex-wife.
 
You asked for the drop of the lower resolution (1600x900) because nobody uses it any more. I explained why some people will use it on their 1920x1080 display, to gain a few FPS without lowering details.

People asked us a long time ago to quit with the 2560x1600 tests because hardly anyone had 2560x1600 monitors. And our 2560x1600 monitors won't do 2560x1440, so we'd have to pay for a new "QHD" monitor in order to drop to 2560x1440 from our long-forgotten 2560x1600.

3x 1920x1080 is cheap enough for most high-end builders (I got my screen for around $120 each), and gives you the advantage of peripheral vision. Gaming is pretty cool in "Surround", a lot of guys even prefer it.

 
I have noticed that the lowest system never has a hybrid drive like a seagate 1tb desktop drive the price is less than $20 more and would make the pc more snappy about 80% of the time. It is totally worth it for regular work I got one and cloned my work laptop and now my 6 year old laptop is great now for office work.
 

for playing mantle-enabled titles, ..... may be. as long as amd properly supports it and the game developer as well. but mantle and dx12 won't help with overall non-gaming application performance, even after overclocking.
 


they don't work that good. my experiences with them have been rather discouraging. i'll take a high end Hard drive or a low end SSD over a hybrid any day of the week.
 
While theoretically "free", the added speed from overclocks is depressing in both higher end systems. Focusing on gaming alone, you can simply conclude that the added speed from overclocks is depressing... from 29 to 31fps... sigh.
 

Are you a "one is too many" reader, or are there like a dozen of them? If they're in the tables I'd like to know, because I copy and paste stuff and miss it. If they're in the body our copy editors might like to know.
This happens when the card is already close to its limit. Sometimes we get lucky, often we don't. I've had much better luck with the "CPU lottery".

 
I wonder how much difference in gaming you'd get in the $1600 build by dropping the i7 to an i5, and the R9 290X to a 290(non-X). I'd imagine the gaming performance would only take a slight hit, while the price drops ~$200.

Granted that's only gaming, and 60% of this score is other stuff.
 
Another great System Builder series! All 3 were good systems (too bad about having to cut the RAM heatsink though), but that Pentium with stock cooler really impressed. Paired with the R9 270, it made for a potent build at this price point. Thank you Tom's!
 
Crashman makes several good points. I have a back-ordered 970 on the way for my 2nd build (1st was 2500k for wife) and I was questioning the 5820 cpu against the 4790. Thankfully I read this before getting the 5820. Crashman, do you feel the same about the 5930 or 5960 with 40 lanes, price aside? Thanks
 
IMO you buy LGA 2011-v3 to get 40 lanes, 6 cores, or both.The 5820k is the example where you get the cores, but with much of the cache disabled so that it resembles a 6-core heavily underclocked version of the 4790K. Bad deal for most users, even most power users, but there are probably a few production machines where it could be useful.

Your decision gets complicated as you move up to the 5930K and 5960X, because you have to look even more closely at the balance of applications you're running. Many power users will likely benefit from the 5960X's added cores, enough to offset its smaller frequency deficiency. Some will even benefit from the 5930K. And you get all 40 lanes with both of those.

Because the 5960X and 5930K are not as slow or as crippled as the 5820K, it's far more difficult not to consider them in any performance build where you have the money. And so, you end up spending a few hours poring over the performance charts and figuring out how much time you spend at each task.

 
Crashman thanks for your response. With Broadwell and Skylake around the corner, I think it's best to stick with a 4790k for the next couple years. If we get a Skylake-K chip in 2016, the DDR4 prices should settle down by that point and I would consider switching. Maybe I'l even wait for Canonlake. IDK
 
Why is it all games games games!!! Probably 90% system builders are making a small office or personal server, or a personal PC that IS NOT GAME ORIENTED!!!

Is it just too boring for you to evaluate builds for reliability, ease of upgrade and ease of construction (like non proprietary parts for connectors).

Your site was not helpful at all in my selection to replace a SOHO server HP N40L with a Lenovo T140. Can we search your site with these very popular and hackable servers and get any hits? No-nothing except forum questions. And 0 for T140.

So you are so not on my bookmarks any more.
 
I'd like to see in the next SBM one of the builds (the higher ones) do a dual-socket option. Frequently we see games get bottlenecked by the CPU quickly in low resolutions as well as in the high-end in Crossfire and SLI configurations. There are, however, cpus such as Xeons, that have dual-socket options, as well as the full 64 PCIe lane option motherboards for a true 4-way SLI/Crossfire.

Which performs better 2 - E5-2620 v3s [6-cores] ($410 x 2) and a $570 Supermicro motherboard with 64 lanes, or a $1000 i7 5960x [8 cores] and a $200-400 motherboard with 40 lanes? This example is off a $5000 build. Jumping down a notch to the i7 5930k [6 cores] at $560 vs 2 - E5 2603 v3s [6 cores] [2 x $226], which would perform better?

It does seem that once you've passed your $1500-1600 mark, you'd be better suited dual socket.
 
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