On Benchmarking the New System
Okay, I broke down and bought a new computer. First time I’ve built one up from pieces ordered individually. I got a decent new processor from Intel, the i7 line (not i7 Extreme). And I got decent graphics card from EVGA with the NVidia GeForce 9800 GT chipset that will get me through most applications without too much trouble. Nothing jaw dropping, but a decent machine with 4GB of Ram, all coming together around an award-winning Asus motherboard.
So I boot it, install the OS, and before I could even blink… Blue Screen of Death! The error was always something about MEMORY MANAGEMENT. It happened a number of times before I decided to address the issue. Turns out that my two fancy 2GB Corsair XMS3 memory sticks operate at higher voltage than my motherboard’s default. Thankfully, Asus had my back with plenty of BIOS options to adjust the Voltage. For my particular setup, I manually configured the DRAM voltage to 1.65 and the frequency set at DRAM-1600MHz. This solved my problem. No more BSOD, and the system response just felt a whole lot snappier. All that done… it was time to benchmark!
A friend recommended the 3dMark program available from FutureMark. So, I download and run it. And what did I find? Well, words can only say so much…
Note the processors. They have an Intel, just like mine. Except they spent the big monies on an Extreme Edition core. You can see some specs for the i7 Core here, and the i7 Extreme Edition here. The speed of the processors is quite different. You can see that clocked 2673 MHz of the i7-920 is far less than the clocked 4938 MHz of the i7-975 Extreme. But look at the scores. According to 3DMark, they were able to do more with my basic chip than their big fancy (read: expensive) one. Clearly, in a gaming/graphics environment, I have enough processing power and then some. And since I have no trouble getting around windows, running multiple instances of Visual Studio, Photoshop, et cetera, all concurrently, there is little that would lead me to believe they are using the full potential their chip, despite assurance that it is, indeed, the fastest chip on the planet.
Gotta say, Intel, you make some fine chips these days. But, clearly, $1000 is bit much, when I can do just as well with a chip costing way less.