Gaming and power consumption
Venerable Quake 4 doesn't really tax any G80-based graphics card and the Apollo's GTS 640 manages to average over 100fps.
Slapping on some DX10 hurt by looking at Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, we see that the visual complexity causes both systems to slow down significantly at the tested settings. They even dipped down to single-digit returns at times.
Here's an interesting comparison. We've run Company of Heroes at the game's high-quality setting. As mentioned in the notes, no anti-aliasing was enabled because that caused the Apollo system to crash.
Using the DX10 codepath, rather than DX9, provides slightly more realistic battlefield visuals but at a huge cost in frame rates. DX10 performance is consistently down on both machines - and DX10 represents around 35 per cent of DX9's frame-rates. Importantly, the game becomes choppy with DX10 as the render of choice.
Power
| System | PC Specialist Apollo Q6600-X | HEXUS E6700 GTX |
|---|---|---|
| Power-draw at idle | 185W | 190W |
| Power-draw with all cores subject to Prime95 torture | 249W | 235W |
| Power-draw with Prime95 and 3DMark06 looping | 275W | 288W |
The power-draw figures, as measured at the mains, are generally similar between the machines. The HEXUS Core 2 Duo system has a slightly lower Prime95-only load figure but this rises to almost 300W once the GeForce 8800 GTX kicks in.
What we can say is that the PC Specialist system's FSP 700W PSU will provide ample power even if a second SLI-forming GeForce card and numerous hard drives are added later.
