CyberPower Core i7-920

CINEBENCH R10

CINEBENCH places a heavy load on the CPU during the rendering tests, and can utilize a single CPU or multiple cores. The video subsystem has no bearing on the CPU rendering portion of this benchmark.

Considering the price, this system performs extremely well in CINEBENCH; the Core i7 processor does a fantastic job at rendering, which is expected with the eight virtual cores (four physical plus Hyper-Threading).

PCMark Vantage

Our standard for general platform performance is the PCMark Vantage suite that provides a wide series of tests. Some tests focus on the CPU while others also utilize the video subsystem. Tests include digital photo manipulation, webpage loading, video transcoding, HD content playback, and so forth.

The CyberPower machine places respectably here, but well below the pricier systems. Why? Compared to the Velocity Micro Edge Z55, the scores were noticeably lower in the Memory and Hard Drive test suites. Likewise, while the Core i7 easily won the Gaming test against the Überclok Reactor, the Core i7 was 1000 points lower in the Memory suite and 2000 points lower in the Hard Drive suite. The Western Digital Caviar "Green" hard drive is hampering the system performance; a faster choice here would make sense and wouldn't dramatically alter the price. 5400RPM drives are very old technology, and there's little point in making a "green" choice on the HDD when the remaining components consume plenty of power.

SPECviewperf 10

Though these machines are intended for gaming, often the high-end hardware is useful for other purposes as well, such as CAD, artistic rendering, and medical software. Purists will tell you that professional graphics solutions are the only way to ensure that the driver packages will be completely accurate and stable, but many can and do utilize consumer graphics cards for this sort of work. SPECviewperf is a set of benchmarks that measure the OpenGL performance of packages such as 3D Studio Max, Pro/Engineer, Solid Works, and other professional applications used daily by many companies. The benchmark is free to download and test on your own system, but be aware that running all the tests takes several hours to complete. We ran all tests at a resolution of 1280x1024.

Results can be compared at the SPEC website, but compared to one of our previous test systems, the Reactor, the Core i7 once again shows how great its rendering performance is.