Digital Storm Bolt II: Devil’s Canyon Inside

Futuremark is one of the best-known benchmark providers around. We use the PCMark line to give us a sense of the computer’s overall capabilities. The 3DMark line, on the other hand, is entirely graphics-oriented and is meant to indicate how your PC will handle taxing games.

Futuremark PCMark 7 & 8 Simulated Application Performance

PCMark runs through the types of tasks your PC is likely to encounter during ordinary home and office use. It tests the system’s graphics capabilities as well, but it isn’t meant to test the limits of a high-end, discrete graphics card. Look at both PCMark 7 and PCMark 8 as indicators of a system’s general usage performance.


Clearly, the Digital Storm Bolt II is a well-rounded system. It handles office and home tasks without trouble and landed near the top of the pack. But gaming and general entertainment is what this system is built for, so the 3DMark tests will matter more for the Bolt II.

Futuremark 3DMark 11 Simulated Gaming Performance

Although Futuremark’s 3DMark 11 has been around for several years, it still provides a good look at a system’s gaming capabilities. It's also handy tool for benchmarking machines that still run Windows 7. We ran this benchmark on the Performance preset, at 1280 x 720 resolution. If you download the free version of this benchmark, make sure you're using the Performance preset to avoid comparing scores that were run with different test configurations.


The Bolt II rolled in with a reasonable score in 3DMark 11. Given the processor and graphics card in the Digital Storm VIRTUE that we recently tested, the Bolt II provides a nice boost and shows why the Bolt II commands a somewhat higher price.

Futuremark 3DMark Fire Strike Simulated Gaming Performance

Futuremark’s 3DMark Fire Strike is designed specifically for high-end gaming PCs. We used the Extreme preset, which bumps the resolution to 2560x1440 and provides a more challenging test than the standard Performance preset. The test is designed for systems with dual cards, but we have a pool of scores from systems with dual and single cards for comparison.


Here, the Bolt II edged out a GTX Titan-equipped system.