HP Blackbird 002 High Performance Gaming System

Name: HP Blackbird 002 High Performance Gaming System - Page 8
Brand: HP

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, September 05, 2007, 08:00 AM EDT

3DMark06's built-in CPU test is a multi-threaded "gaming related" DirectX metric that's useful for comparing relative performance between similarly equipped systems. This test consists of two different 3D scenes that are generated with a software renderer that is dependent on the host CPU's performance. This means that the calculations normally reserved for your 3D accelerator are instead sent to the central processor. The number of frames generated per second in each test are used to determine the final score.

Futuremark 3DMark06 - CPU Test

Simulated DirectX Gaming Performance

As expected, the HP Blackbird 002 had no trouble outperforming the stock systems in 3DMark06's CPU benchmark. In this test, the Blackbird 002 was between 8% and 12% faster than our reference machines.

Benchmarks with and F.E.A.R. v1.08

DirectX 9 Gaming Performance

Next, we moved on to some in-game benchmarking with F.E.A.R. When testing processors with F.E.A.R, we drop the resolution to 640x480, and reduce all of the in-game graphical options to their minimum values to isolate CPU and memory performance as much as possible. However, the in-game effects, which control the level of detail for the games' physics engines and particle systems, are left at their maximum values, since these actually do place some load on the CPU rather than GPU.

F.E.A.R. is CPU and memory-bound when run at a low resolution, but despite the Blackbird 002's "win" here, it didn't finish all that far ahead of the stock system. The Blackbird 002's unpatched Vista OS and somewhat older video drivers certainly held it back here.

Tags: Gaming, HP, system, Gaming System, performance, rf, STEM, black, RMA, Gamin, AC, AM, K

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com