We now move on to graphical performance – first up we take a look at actual benchmark software in the form of both 3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage. This is another benchmarking program from Futuremark but this time looks exclusively at the gaming performance of the PC it’s assessing.

First up is 3DMark06 running at its standard 1280x1024 setting. Lower resolution is better in CPU benchmarking as it allows us to more easily identify any performance limitations introduced by low CPU speed or limited core count.



The lack of cores certainly impact the score here - it ends up quite a distance behind the others at stock clocks although the 4.03GHz overclock really pulls back ground.

For Vantage I had much more information to go on since I'd used for my Intel motherboard testing a while back.



Again we see a low score and in Vantages case we see little improvement in the score. As I mentioned in the last review Vantage certainly seems more GPU dependant for a high score so you probably shouldn't read too much into it!