Velocity Micro Edge Z55: Core i7-940 with CrossFire 4870

Gaming/3D Performance

3DMark Vantage

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

The Reactor is a Core 2 Quad machine at 3.4GHz with a GTX 280, while the CyberPower is a 4.0GHz Core 2 Quad with two GTX 280 cards in SLI. In the Entry run, which is primarily dependent on the CPU, the Edge Z55 is held back by its clock speed. At Performance and higher, once GPU power begins to factor in, the Z55 takes its rightful place ahead of the Reactor and F131, but still trails the Xtreme XI system.

Crysis

Crysis is punishing to even the most recent PC hardware. This demo also has two built-in benchmarks in the "bin32" folder, one "CPU" and the other "GPU". We ran several configurations to show the scalability of this game. 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. These results used the 8.12 beta drivers.

Always ready for more GPU power, Crysis performs very well on the Z55.

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:

As this is our first system through the tests, we don't have direct comparisons yet, but the game looked fantastic. Here we see a clear delineation between CPU constraint without anti-aliasing, and GPU constraint with 4xAA. 1920x1200 at 2xAA is a great playable framerate on this system at Very High quality.