8. Benchmarks: Gaming

3DMark05

In 3dMark we see a sizable performance spread, but the problem is that we have no ability to see if the Eurocom is being helped out more by its E6800 Extreme CPU or by its mature Windows XP graphic drivers. This is a synthetic gaming benchmark though; let’s look at the real thing.

Doom 3

We see much less of a spread now that we’re not dealing with a synthetic benchmark anymore. Especially when anisotropic filtering is enabled at high resolutions, we see that the CPU - and even the operating system - has relatively little effect on gaming performance compared to the graphics cards. Both systems share the same Geforce 7950 GTX pair in SLI, and both show very similar performance.

Note that this game is more than playable at the extremely high 1920x1200 resolution. So far, these platforms are looking like capable desktop replacements indeed!