MaximumPC 2007 02

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BENCHMARK IT

We compared our $1,500 PC to

Overdrive’s $2,500 PC (the winner of

our showdown in December), as well as

our MPC standard zero-point system,

which would have cost about $3,

last spring when it was assembled. The

result? Not bad when you consider the

relative prices involved. Our OC’d Core

2 slams our zero-point Athlon 64 FX-

to the pavement in the application tests

but loses to the Overdrive PC, which

features more L2 cache and RAM and a

CPU overclocked to 3.46GHz. In gam-

ing, the single GeForce 8800 GTS can’t

beat the outdated GPUs in our zero-

point, nor can it touch the overclocked

GeForce 7950 GX2 in the Overdrive

PC. However, our leaner machine does

take the top spot for visual quality—the

GeForce 8800 series can’t be beat.

When you factor in the ability to run

DirectX 10 games, we’re pretty happy

with the result, and we can pocket a

cool grand in savings.

What $1,500 Looks Like!

Nine Hundred

Fans

You can’t see the fans

from this angle, but the

Antec Nine Hundred is

all fan. With a 20cm (!!!)

fan on top and three

12cm fans, this case

won’t have temp issues

in the summer.

Our First

Upgrades

We made some compro-

mises to get next-gen

graphics today. Our

first round of scheduled

upgrades to this rig

will probably include a

second gig of memory,

a soundcard, and Vista

(if the DirectX 10 games

have arrived).

LEAN MACHINE ZERO POINT $2,

07 SYSTEM OVERDRIVE PC

CPU 3.06GHz Core 2.6GHz Athlon 3.46GHz Core 2

2 Duo E6300 64 FX-60 Duo E

GPU GeForce 8800 GTS GeForce 7900 GeForce 7950

GTX in SLI GX

Hard drive 250GB Maxtor 400GB Western 250GB Seagate

7,200rpm Digital 7,200rpm 7,200rpm

RAM 1GB DDR2/800 2GB DDR400 2GB DDR2/

Premiere Pro 2.0 1,923 3,000 1,

HDV (sec)

Photoshop CS2 (sec) 220 295 202

Nero Recode 2.0 1,984 2,648 1,

AVC test (sec)

FEAR 1.07 (fps) 65 80 83

Quake 4 (fps) 89 110.5 133.

3DMark06 Deep 33 39.7 37.

Freeze (fps)

Best scores are bolded.