CyberPowerPC Zeus Thunder 2500 SE Gaming PC Review
PCMark and 3DMark Tests
To kick things off, we fired up Futuremark's system performance benchmark, PCMark Vantage. This synthetic benchmark suite simulates a range of real-world scenarios and workloads, stressing various system subsets in the process. Everything you'd want to do with your PC -- watching HD movies, music compression, image editing, gaming, and so forth -- is represented here, and most of the tests are multi-threaded, making this a good indicator of all-around performance.
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Although our CyberPowerPC Zeus Thunder 2500 SE didn’t always do especially well against other systems in testing (as you’ll see later), this impressive PCMark Vantage score is indicative of an all-around strong system. The combination of an overclocked Ivy Bridge processor, top-notch NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 graphics card, and a good Corsair SSD (not to mention the liquid cooling) is a potent one.
As you can see, our system edged out every other save for the (insane) Maingear SHIFT SS. The Digital Storm ODE system posted a strangely low score in this one, though, which helps to bump up the CyberPowerPC’s place. Note well, however, that unlike most of the top-performing systems here, the CyberPowerPC is one of the only ones without at least two graphics cards.
As you can see, our system edged out every other save for the (insane) Maingear SHIFT SS. The Digital Storm ODE system posted a strangely low score in this one, though, which helps to bump up the CyberPowerPC’s place. Note well, however, that unlike most of the top-performing systems here, the CyberPowerPC is one of the only ones without at least two graphics cards.
In the PCMark7 test, it’s the iBuyPower system’s turn for a funky score. There’s no reason why it should have done as well as it did, particularly against the Digital Storm rig that has a better processor and twice the graphics firepower. (This is why we run a battery of tests instead of just relying on one or two.)
Regardless, the CyberPowerPC trailed them both, though by a slim margin. It didn’t come close to matching the score of 6654 posted by the Maingear system, however, although that’s not surprising.
The latest version of Futuremark's synthetic 3D gaming benchmark, 3DMark11, is specifically bound to Windows Vista and 7-based systems because it uses the advanced visual technologies that are only available with DirectX 11, which isn't available on previous versions of Windows. 3DMark11 isn't simply a port of 3DMark Vantage to DirectX 11, though. With this latest version of the benchmark, Futuremark has incorporated four new graphics tests, a physics tests, and a new combined test. We tested the graphics cards here with 3DMark11's Performance preset option, as well as ran the system through a 3DMark Vantage run, which focuses on DirectX 10.
There’s a notable lead pack in 3DMark Vantage, and it’s comprised of the Maingear SHIFT SS, Digital Storm ODE, and CyberPowerPC systems; from there, the field drops off. The delta between the Digital Storm and CyberPowerPC systems is rather small, which is impressive considering the former has a slightly better CPU and two graphics cards.
(Yes, it’s also worth noting that the Maingear SHIFT SS killed the other rigs by a longshot. We’re just going to stop talking about how that monstrous system took the top score again; frankly, it’s going to be tops in pretty much every benchmark for the foreseeable future. When it finally falls to some system that costs half as much, we’ll address it again. Cool? Cool.)
Although in 3DMark 11 our CyberPowerPC system again took third, there was a bit more distance between it and the Digital Storm ODE system and much less distance between it and the Digital Storm Enix rig. The results from all the systems actually form a nice curve.
Regardless, the CyberPowerPC trailed them both, though by a slim margin. It didn’t come close to matching the score of 6654 posted by the Maingear system, however, although that’s not surprising.
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There’s a notable lead pack in 3DMark Vantage, and it’s comprised of the Maingear SHIFT SS, Digital Storm ODE, and CyberPowerPC systems; from there, the field drops off. The delta between the Digital Storm and CyberPowerPC systems is rather small, which is impressive considering the former has a slightly better CPU and two graphics cards.
(Yes, it’s also worth noting that the Maingear SHIFT SS killed the other rigs by a longshot. We’re just going to stop talking about how that monstrous system took the top score again; frankly, it’s going to be tops in pretty much every benchmark for the foreseeable future. When it finally falls to some system that costs half as much, we’ll address it again. Cool? Cool.)
Although in 3DMark 11 our CyberPowerPC system again took third, there was a bit more distance between it and the Digital Storm ODE system and much less distance between it and the Digital Storm Enix rig. The results from all the systems actually form a nice curve.
Even on the Extreme preset, the CyberPowerPC Zeus Thunder 2500 SE performs reasonably well, although the Digital Storm ODE Level 4 posted a score of X5384.
