MaximumPC 2006 04

How We Test

Real-world benchmarks. Real-world results

67

BEST OF THE BEST

High-end videocard:

ATI Radeon X1900 XTX

It’s faster than the competition and

smokes it in video quality to boot

Midrange videocard:

Leadtek WinFast 7800GT TDH

Extreme

Soundcard:

Creative Labs X-Fi Xtreme Music

Hard drive:

Western Digital WD400KD

External backup drive:

Western Digital Dual-Option Media

Center 320GB

Portable USB drive:

Seagate Portable External Hard

Drive 100GB

DVD burner:

Plextor PX-716A

Widescreen LCD monitor:

Dell 2405FPW

Desktop LCD monitor:

Samsung 940BF

Socket 939 Athlon 64 mobo:

Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe

Socket 775 Pentium 4 mobo:

Asus P5ND32-SLI

Portable MP3 player:

Apple iPod

5.1 speakers:

M-Audio Studiophile LX4 5.1 (LX4

2.1 with 5.1 Expander System)

2.1 speakers:

M-Audio Studiophile LX4 2.1

Mid-tower case:

Lian Li PCV-1100

Full-tower case:

Silverstone TJ07

Games we are playing: City of

Villains, Battlefield 2, PerplexCity,

Need for Speed: Most Wanted

How to Read Our Benchmark Chart

Maximum PC’s test beds double as zero-point systems, against which all review systems

are compared. Here’s how to read our benchmark chart.

Our monthly category-by-category

list of our favorite products. New

products are in red.

C

omputer performance used to be mea-
sured with synthetic tests that had little or
no bearing on real-world performance. Even
worse, when hardware vendors started tailor-
ing their drivers for these synthetic tests, the
performance in actual games and applications
sometimes dropped.
At Maximum PC , our mantra for testing has
always been hreal-world.v We use tests that
rem ect tasks power users perform every single
day. With that in mind, here are the six real-
world benchmarks that we use to test every
system we review.
SYSmark2004 : This is the most compre-
hensive application benchmark available, using
no fewer than 19 applications to measure the
time it takes for the PC to complete to real-world
computer-intensive tasks. /ur SYSmark score is
a composite based on the time the test takes to
complete several different types of tasks.
Adobe Premiere Pro : The leading non-
linear digital-video editor has recently been
retooled with more support for multi-threading.
We take a raw A6I fi le, add several transi-
tions and a soundtrack, export it to a generic
MPE'- fi le, and then report the time the
script takes to complete.
Adobe Photoshop CS : We don’t subscribe

to Apple’s half-baked idea that running one fi lter

test in Photoshop , in one certain way, at a partic-

ular time of day provides an accurate measure of

performance. Instead, we take a high-resolution

image and throw it through just about every fi lter

available in Photoshop CS at it. /ur score is the

time it takes for the script to complete.

Divx Encode : 6ideo encoding is today’s

time-suck. We transcode a short movie stored

on the hard drive from MPE'- to Divx using

#1 DVD Ripper. We report the length of time the

process takes to complete.

3DMark05 : After ranting about real-world

tests, you might be surprised to fi nd this hsyn-

theticv graphics test in our suite. 3DMark05 ,

however, has proved to be the standard by

which graphics cards and PCs that run them

are judged. Instead of reporting a meaning-

less composite score, we run the third test at

10x10 with x antialiasing and x aniso-

tropic fi ltering, then report the frame rate. /ur

zero-point system with SLI can’t even break 0

frames per second.

Doom 3 : Id’s hugely popular game is a dark,

scary, and serious test of PC horsepower.

We run this game with x antialiasing and x

anisotropic fi ltering, at 100x100 resolution,

and report the frame rate.

BENCHMARKS

SYS mark 2004 201

ZERO POINT SCORES

Premiere Pro^620 sec

Photoshop CS 286 sec

Divx Encode 1812 sec

3D Mark05 29.3 fps

Doom 3 77. 1 fps

0 1 0% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Our zero-point reference systems uses a 2.6GHz Athlon 64 FX-55, 2GB of DDR400 Crucial Ballistix RAM,

two nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra cards in SLI, a Maxtor 250GB DiamondMax10, a Sound Blaster Audigy 2

ZS, a PC Power and Cooling TurboCool 510 Deluxe Express, and Windows XP Pro with SP2.

The scores achieved by our zero-point system are noted

in this column. They remain the same, month in, month

out, until we decide to update our zero-point.

The actual

scores achieved

by the system

being reviewed.

The bar graph indicates how much faster

the review system performed in respect

to the zero-point system. If a system

exceeds the zero-point performance by

more than 100 percent, the graph will

show a full-width bar and a plus sign.

The names

of the actual

benchmarks

used.

Every month we remind readers of our

key zero-point components.

216

494 sec

362 sec (-20.99%)

1635 sec

82 fps

Premiere ProPremiere Pro

PPhotoshop CS

60%

62.3 fps (112.63%)

APRIL 2006 MA XIMUMPC