Ultimate DIY Performance PC: EVGA & Intel Infused

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, August 04, 2010, 02:29 PM EDT

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3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage

3DMark06's built-in CPU test is a multi-threaded DirectX gaming metric that's useful for comparing relative performance between similarly equipped systems. This test consists of two different 3D scenes that are processed with a software renderer that is dependent on the host CPU's performance. Calculations that are normally reserved for your 3D accelerator are instead sent to the CPU for processing and rendering. The frame-rate generated in each test is used to determine the final score.

Futuremark 3DMark06

Synthetic DirectX Gaming

3DMark06 was developed before multi-core desktop systems were prevalent, so it's comes as no surprise that this benchmark cannot exploit the additional resources afforded by the SR-2 / Xeon combo. The SR-2 was the leader by a considerable margin, but the 980X isn't all that far behind.

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

Synthetic DirectX Gaming

3DMark Vantage's CPU Test 2 is a multi-threaded test designed for comparing relative game physics processing performance between systems. This test consists of a single scene that features an air race of sorts, with a complex configuration of gates. There are aircraft in the test that trail smoke and collide with various cloth and soft-body obstacles, each other, and the ground. The smoke spreads, and reacts to the planes as they pass through it as well and all of this is calculated on the host CPU.

3DMark Vantage's CPU Test 2 shows a larger spread than 3DMark06, but not what you'd expect from such a monster system. The EVGA Classified SR-2 / Dual Xeon 5680 combo ends up being only about 12% faster than the Core i7 980X in this benchmark, but is considerably faster than any of the other platforms.