Benchmark results
A PCMark score is a measure of a computer’s performance across a variety of common tasks such as viewing and editing photos, video, music and other media, gaming, communications, productivity and security. Faster CPUs tend to do well here.| PCMark Vantage (systems) | |
|---|---|
| W2F Hellspawn XFire (Core i7) | W2F Velocity (Phenom II) |
| 6916 | 5748 |
The Hellspawn Core i7 opens up a 20 per cent lead over the Velocity Phenom II.
SYSmark 2007 Preview is an application-based benchmark that reflects usage patterns of business users in the areas of video creation, e-learning, 3D modeling and office productivity. Numbers from this benchmark should reinforce PCMark Vantage's, and vice versa.
| SYSmark 2007 Preview (systems) | |
|---|---|
| W2F Hellspawn XFire (Core i7) | W2F Velocity (Phenom II) |
| 193 | 169 |
The lead in SYSMark Preview 2007 is just under 15 per cent. We don't care much for that when opening up a Word document, but reducing video- or audio-encoding times by ~15 per cent is another matter, clearly.
A 3DMark score is an overall measure of a system’s 3D gaming capabilities, based on comprehensive real-time 3D graphics and processor tests. The 'Extreme' parameter is defined as running the test at 1,920x1,200 with 4x AA 16x AF and extreme-quality settings for the benchmark.
| 3DMark Vantage - 1,920x1,200 Extreme (systems) | |
|---|---|
| W2F Hellspawn XFire (Core i7) | W2F Velocity (Phenom II) |
| 5821 | 5702 |
The Core i7-powered Hellspawn returns a slightly higher score in this card-limited benchmark. For what it's worth, the CPU element is scored at around 22,000 for the Intel machine and at around 12,000 for the AMD rig.
Performance summary
Running at 3.6GHz in both cases, Intel's Core i7 is between 14-20 per cent faster over a broad range of application-based benchmarks, but shows little frame-rate improvement once the graphics test is set to ultra-high levels. The onus, in that instance, is on the graphics card.