Benchmarks

I could go on and on about the theoretical capabilities of Maingear’s Ephex Elite gaming rig, but instead I’m going to let some numbers do the talking. I ran a mix of gaming and synthetic benchmarks highlighting the DX11 capabilities of the system, as well as its sheer horsepower: 3DMark Vantage, Unigine “Heaven,” Crysis: Warhead, Metro 2033, STALKER: Call of Pripyat, and Aliens vs. Predator.

System Setup

Intel Core i7-950 @ 3.07GHz
3x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 in 3-way SLI
6GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1600
150GB Western Digital Raptor
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
ForceWare 257.21 drivers






No doubt you agree that the results are impressive across the board. However, I feel I must comment on the Unigine demo in particular. We have all seen the screenshots and videos of it before, but I’m telling you, it in no way compares to seeing it with your own eyes. Watching it rendered in real-time, being able to manipulate the camera, toggling the wireframes and tessellation to see the difference DX11 makes with virtually no performance hit… It is the most amazing thing I have ever seen on a computer monitor, and I really do think it represents the next generation of graphics in games.