Benchmarks: CPU
The PiFast number-crunching benchmark paints an interesting picture. Relying heavily on single-thread speed, this test suggests that while the 3XS Carbon SLI's Sandy Bridge Extreme processor is stupidly quick, it isn't quite as fine-tuned as systems armed with overclocked Ivy Bridge parts.
But you don't spend this kind of money to run a single thread. Cinebench puts every core to work, and in this scenario the 3XS Carbon SLI lets rip.
But it isn't a clean sweep, and this £3,840 machine isn't the pick of the bunch in the PCMark 7 benchmark, either. The reason for this is simple, the PCMark 7 benchmark includes various tests - such as loading applications and entertainment tasks such as transcoding video - but it doesn't touch on gaming, so the true value of those two GTX 690s is yet to be realised.
