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Gaming Desktop Round-Up: Puget vs. Maingear vs. Acer

Published August 26, 2010
By Shawn Knight

Specs and Benchmarks

After installing the latest Windows updates, we put every system through its paces with several benchmark tests to give you an idea of how its processor, graphics card, hard drive and memory system perform under load. Many of the components found on these systems have been reviewed by us before. If you are looking for a straight performance comparison between processors or high-end graphics cards we suggest you check our standalone hardware reviews.

Puget Deluge Mini System Specs

Hardware:

Intel Core i7 875K (2.93GHz, 8MB L3 cache)
x2 2GB Kingston DDR3-1333 (4GB total)
Asus P7P55-M motherboard
Asus Radeon HD 5870 1GB V2
1TB SATA 6Gb/s hard drive (Western Digital Caviar Black 7200RPM)
Corsair TX 650W power supply
Pioneer 22X DVD-RW

Software:

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

Maingear F131 System Specs

Hardware:

Intel Core i5 655K (4.5GHz overclock, 4MB L3 cache)
x2 2GB Crucial DDR3-1333 (4GB total)
Asus P7P55D-E Pro motherboard
2x Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 in SLI (1536MB GDDR5 Total)
1TB SATA 6Gb/s hard drive (Western Digital Caviar Black 7200RPM)
SilverStone Strider Plus 750W modular power supply
24x dual layer DVD RW drive

Software:

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

Acer Predator

Hardware:

Intel Core i7 930 (2.8GHz, 8MB L3 cache)
x6 2GB Samsung DDR3-1333 (12GB total)
Acer motherboard with Intel X58 Express chipset
Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 with 1280MB of memory
1.5TB Western Digital 7200 RPM hard drive
FSP Group 750W power supply
16x DVD RW optical drive

Software:

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

Benchmark Results

	Puget	Maingear	Acer

3DMark 06 (higher is better)
3DMark Score	19476 3DMarks	23592 3DMarks	19024 3DMarks
CPU Score	5474	4763	5140

3DMark Vantage (higher is better)
3DMark Score	P17776	P26349	P18003
GPU Score	17228	23502	14872
CPU Score	19649	41391	48871

Super PI Mod 1.5 (lower is better)
1M test	0m 11.981 sec	0m 9.516 sec	0m 13.588 sec
4M test	1m 00.092 sec	0m 52.509 sec	1m 09.092 sec

Sandra processor arithmetic (higher is better)
Agregate arithmetic performance	76.69 GOPS	55.78 GOPS	72.86 GOPS
Dhrystone iSSE4.2	92 GIPS	64.73 GIPS	84.22 GIPS
Whetstone iSSE3	61.34 GFLOPS	46.84 GFLOPS	61.5 GFLOPS

Sandra processor multimedia (higher is better)
Aggregate multimedia performance	152 MPixel/s	105.47 MPixel/s	139.23 MPixel/s
Multimedia Integer x16 iSSE4.1	174.36 MPixel/s	120.26 MPixel/s	159.67 MPixel/s
Multimedia Float x8 iSSE2	129.75 MPixel/s	90.68 MPixel/s	118.79 MPixel/s
Multimedia Double x4 iSSE2	70.46 MPixel/s	49.35 MPixel/s	64.58 MPixel/s

Sandra memory bandwidth (higher is better)
Aggregate Memory Performance	16.9 GB/s	13.76 GB/s	19 GB/s
Integer Buff'd iSSE2 Memory Bandwidth	16.9 GB/s	13.74 GB/s	19 GB/s
Float Buff'd iSSE2 Memory Bandwidth	16.9 GB/s	13.78 GB/s	19 GB/s

Sandra memory latency (lower is better)
Memory Latency	76 ns	103 ns	82 ns
Speed Factor	64.10	110.50	58.50

Sandra file systems
Drive Score (higher is better)	162 MB/s	110.44 MB/s	84 MB/s
Random Access Time (lower is better)	2.86 ms	6.54 ms	9.1 ms

Gaming Performance

	Puget	Maingear	Acer

Mafia II (High graphics settings)
1920 x 1080, 16x AA/AF	55.1 fps	64.0 fps	47.3 fps
1920 x 1080, no AA/1xAF	80.8 fps	84.1 fps	73.0 fps

Crysis (Very high graphics settings)
1920 x 1080, 16x AA	35.3 fps	38.5 fps	22.9 fps
1920 x 1080, no AA	39 fps	47.1 fps	31.1 fps

Far Cry 2 (Highest graphics settings)
1920 x 1080, 8x AA	55 fps	88.9 fps	71.2 fps
1920 x 1080, no AA	90 fps	97.6 fps	96.9 fps