Maxon's Cinebench R11.5 benchmark is based on the company's Cinema 4D software used for 3D content creation and tests both the CPU and GPU in separate benchmark runs. On the CPU side, Cinebench renders a photorealistic 3D scene by tapping into up to 64 processing threads (CPU) to process more than 300,000 total polygons, while the GPU benchmark measures graphics performance by manipulating nearly 1 million polygons and huge amounts of textures.
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| Cinebench R11.5 64-bit |
| 3D Rendering Performance |
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Aside from the CrossFireX configuration in the Alienware M18x system that produced an anomalous OpenGL score, the M17x once again cleaned up. It bested the field by a modest margin in the OpenGL test, but that Ivy Bridge chip demolished the competition, coming in nearly two full points ahead of the rest of the group.
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| Futuremark 3DMark 11 |
| Synthetic DX11 Gaming Performance |
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Futuremark 3DMark11
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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 Extreme preset option, which uses a resolution of 1920x1080 with 4x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering. |
The M18x with dual Radeon HD 6990Ms narrowly edged out our M17x, and the M17x just barely beat the M18x with twin GTX 580Ms; however, the gap between the M17x and both of the aforementioned systems is more or less within the margin of error for this test. More impressive is the enormous delta between the M17x's 680M and the M18x's solo 6990M and 580M.
