GPU and power-draw
| 3DMark Vantage Overall Extreme | |
|---|---|
| MESH MATRIX II 550BE | ARBICO OC 2695 XL |
| 4533 | 4690 |
3DMark Vantage's Extreme test takes place at 1,920x1,200 with 4xAA 16xAF. The benchmark is just a touch faster on the ARBICO - the test is card-limited for the most part.
| Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (high-end) 1,680x1,050 4xAA 16xAF | |
|---|---|
| MESH MATRIX II 550BE | ARBICO OC 2695 XL |
| 86.8 | 92.5 |
| Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (high-end) 1,920x1,200 4xAA 16xAF | |
|---|---|
| MESH MATRIX II 550BE | ARBICO OC 2695 XL |
| 77.8 | 76.7 |
Radeon HD 4890 XT and GeForce GTX 260 are about the same speed in Enemy Territory - a situation that's shown here.
| Power consumption - idle | |
|---|---|
| MESH MATRIX II 550BE | ARBICO OC 2695 XL |
| 148 | 106 |
Power-draw is interesting. At idle, defined as the system idling in Vista, the MESH actually draws an additional 42W over the overclocked, overvolted Core 2 Quad.
| Power consumption - load (3D) | |
|---|---|
| MESH MATRIX II 550BE | ARBICO OC 2695 XL |
| 284 | 305 |
Load them up with half the cores set to Prime95 Torture test and the other half helping to run Enemy Territory at 1,680x1,050, we see that the ARBICO begins to show its juice-hungry credentials.
Performance summary
Applications that require CPU grunt are best-run on the ARBICO, with the large assumption that they're multi-threaded in nature. For everyday tasks, though, the Phenom II X2 550BE is more than adequate.
Gaming credentials are similar on both systems, but idle power-draw is markedly different, being some 40W lower on the quad-core-totin' ARBICO.