CINEBENCH R15
CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation.
The KRAIT with 8320e combination is about 14.7 percent slower than the 970 Gaming + 8350 combination. This was the second worst result for our KRAIT combo, but to be fair, if you are doing a lot of 3D rendering…you really will want a more powerful system…or at least a program that can take advantage of the GPU horsepower being wasted. In either case, this is not a great start for our ‘system B’. Score one for our usual value build.
3DMark Fire Strike Benchmark
The latest version of 3DMark from FutureMark includes numerous benchmarks including one they have dubbed “Fire Strike” and we have used the ‘Extreme’ settings. Fire Strike is a DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. Fire Strike features real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.
Just like that the tables are turned and the Krait with dual 960s show their worth. Score one for the newcomer.
winRAR Benchmark
WinRAR is a popular file compression and decompression tool that also happens to be multi-threaded application. While it does have a built in benchmark we have opted to use a custom 3GB test consisting of small, medium, and moderately large files. We then time how long it takes to compress the files into one .rar file with all WinRAR settings left at their defaults.
The WinRAR score is close enough that we doubt anyone would really notice the difference…and if they do we would simply tell them to stick a faster SSD in there as that would have a bigger impact on performance that a slightly faster CPU. In either case, this a point for the System A / 8350 combo.
x264 HD Benchmark
x264 HD Benchmark is a benchmark that allows you to measure how fast your PC can encode a 1080p video clip into a high quality x264 video file. It allows for an easy comparison because everyone running it will use the same video clip and software. The x264 video encoder has a fairly accurate internal benchmark (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encode and it also uses multi-core processors very efficiently. All these factors make the x264 HD Benchmark an ideal tool in comparing the video encoding performance of different processors and systems.
With a massive 18.6% difference, the x264 HD benchmark was not only unimpressed with the KRAIT 8320e combination but down right disliked it. For those keeping score that is 3 to 1 for our usual system build. Obviously if you are interested in a more ‘daily commuter computer’ that handles more work related tasks that game the 970 Krait may not be a great building block. But then again we haven’t looked at the additional features yet, and regardless of the game benchmark results, those may turn the tide pretty darn quick. But first lets look at the game results.
