CyberPower Core i7-920

3DMark Vantage

As we mentioned in previous reviews, Vantage has replaced 3DMark 2006 in our test suite, and though the new payment scheme is inconvenient, it is still user reproducible. Vantage runs on Windows Vista only, and has four different default test settings: Entry, Performance, High, and Xtreme.

With almost identical processor and video subsystems, it's no surprise that the Velocity Micro Edge Z55 and the CyberPower Core i7 are neck and neck throughout 3DMark Vantage. The extra memory of the 4870X2 solution allows the Core i7 to pull slightly ahead in the Xtreme test.

Crysis

Crysis is getting older but it still stresses even the most recent PC hardware. This demo has two built-in benchmarks in the "bin32" folder, one "CPU" and the other "GPU". We ran all benchmarks three times, discarding the first result and averaging the other two. We ran all tests at "High" quality unless otherwise specified.

The 4870X2 shows its power here, handily beating out the Z55 with half the onboard memory. Driver optimizations are also likely playing a small role here. Worth noting is that we strongly recommend that if you're spending $1500 on a system, a 22" 1680x1050 monitor is as small as you'll want to go.

Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2 is a new addition to our test suite. It's a fun game with great ratings, and has a fantastic built-in benchmarking tool (located in the "bin" folder with the executable, or right-click on the shortcut in Games and select "Benchmark"). We've chosen to run our system tests with the reproducible settings shown below:

Far Cry 2 has good performance scaling in general, and AMD's new drivers have significantly improved stability and performance.

The CyberPower system does very well as a gaming PC, which you would expect given the components. Some might prefer NVIDIA hardware in place of the ATI 4870X2, though, and CyberPower can certainly accommodate such requests. You may find our recent GPU scaling roundup useful if you're debating what sort of graphics to purchase.