Maingear Shift Gaming PC with Super Stock Options Review

Performance and Benchmarks

It's important to mention that the six-core CPU in our Shift is overclocked to 4.33 GHz from the stock speed of 3.33 GHz. The Kingston memory is operating at 1,734 MHz at 9-9-9-24. According to EVGA's Precision program, each graphics card is running at 810 / 1,620 / 1,850 MHz on the Core, Shader and Memory clocks, respectively.

Below we've included some reference benchmark results from the several tests we ran on the Shift to give you an idea of how its processor, graphics cards, memory, and hard drive perform under load. Note that gaming tests were run on a 24" Samsung monitor with a max supported resolution of 1920x1080. Ideally, you would want a 30" monitor capable of 2560x1600 or even multiple displays to fully utilize the triple-SLI capability.

For the sake of comparison, we have included benchmark results from two of the systems we reviewed back in August in our mainstream gaming desktop round-up. It's obvious there is no competition between systems that are on a completely different class, the Maingear F131 and the Acer Predator are both sub-$2,000 gaming desktops.

Hardware:

• Intel Core i7-980X Extreme overclocked at 4.33GHz
• 6GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-2000MHz
• Asus Rampage III Extreme X58 motherboard
• 3x EVGA GeForce GTX 480
• 2x 128GB Crucial RealSSD C300
• 2TB Western Digital Caviar Black 7200RPM HDD
• 1.5KW SilverStone Strider modular power supply

Hardware:

• Intel Core i5 655K (4.5GHz overclock, 4MB L3 cache)
• 4GB Crucial DDR3-1333
• Asus P7P55D-E Pro motherboard
• 2x Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 in SLI (1536MB GDDR5 Total)
• 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black 7200RPM HDD
• SilverStone Strider Plus 750W modular power supply

Hardware:

• Intel Core i7 930 (2.8GHz, 8MB L3 cache)
• 12GB Samsung DDR3-1333
• Acer motherboard with Intel X58 Express chipset
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 with 1280 GDDR5
• 1.5TB Western Digital 7200 RPM hard drive
• FSP Group 750W power supply