We kicked off our testing with the venerable PCMark system benchmark, as well as the more game-oriented 3DMark 11 and the newest test by Futuremark: 3DMark Fire Strike. Over the years, Futuremark has made a name for itself with comprehensive benchmarks that provide consistent results for comparing granular and big-picture performance.
As you’ll see, the iBuypower Chimera 4SE FX Ultimate faces off against desktops and SFFs alike in our tests. We included certain SFFs that have high-end graphics cards (like Falcon Northwest’s Tiki) to give you a sense of how the Chimera compares to these (generally pricier) tiny PCs.
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| Futuremark PCMark 7 |
| Simulated Application Performance |
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PCMark 7
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PCMark 7 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 mean to test the limits of high-end, discrete graphics card. Look at PCMark 7 as an indicator of a system’s general usage performance. |
Surprisingly, the Chimera 4SE FX Ultimate provided the lowest scores of the lot in PCMark 7, despite multiple retests. The low score is worth noting here, but given the system’s strong performance in other benchmarks, it doesn’t seem to be indicative of the Chimera’s overall capabilities.
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| Futuremark 3DMark 11 |
| Simulated Gaming Performance |
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3DMark 11
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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 |
Here, too, the Chimera struggled a bit, but it didn’t place quite as low as it did PCMark. Just when things were looking bleak, we fired up 3DMark Fire Strike and the Chimera kicked things up a few notches. Read on.
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| Futuremark 3DMark Fire Strike |
| Simulated Gaming Performance |
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Fire Strike
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The next test we chose was Futuremark’s newest: 3DMark Fire Strike is designed specifically for high-end gaming PCs like the Chimera. Because Extreme mode is geared towards systems that have multiple graphics cards in CrossFire or SLI configurations, we opted for Normal mode, which runs at 1920 x 1080. |
Faced with Futuremark’s latest and most challenging benchmark, the Chimera suddenly remembered what it was made for and resumed its spot just behind the Gamer Xtreme, providing an average frame rate about 1fps slower than CyberPower’s system. That’s much more like what we expect from a system with the Chimera’s guts.
