Craigslist Killer (Under $500) Gaming PC Benchmarks

How well does the "Craigslist Killer" gaming rig compare to the Alienware Alpha? The sub $500 gaming computer builds were put to the test and the benchmark results were surprising. If you haven't read my prior post on the Craigslist Killer Gaming Computer Build, go check it out before you read this one. In order to provide accurate tests we ran multiple benchmarks using the 3Dmark benchmark software. While testing both PC's during actual gameplay to determine game stutter and tearing would be nice, it is a subjective test. The goal of testing these two computers is to provide completely objective results.

I will also go over the performance increase when overclocking the Intel Pentium G3258 CPU at the end. I will go more in depth about overclocking the Pentium G3258 in a different post.

The Benchmark

Before I give the results I want to say that the Fire Strike benchmark is not ideal for testing because these PC's were not built with such demanding games in mind. However, we included these results just in case anyone is interested.

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Fire Strike (High)

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As you can see from these results, the base clocked Craigslist Killer (CK) rig out performs the Alienware Alpha (AA), by 15%. That may seem like somewhat of a significant number, it doesn't translate to that much of an overall increase in performance. This is again, in part to Fire Strike being a demanding benchmark.

When the CK rig was overclocked to 4.4GHz there was a slight increase in performance over the 3.2GHz base clock but only by about 5%. Compared to the AA PC the overclocked CK PC performed 20% better.

While the Craigslist Killer rig performed better than the Alienware Alpha that particular game wouldn't really be playable on either machine with frame rates under 30fps.

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Sky Diver

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Games like Sky Diver are what these entry level gaming computers are geared towards. This is evident with the much higher scores they received. With games that aren't nearly as graphically demanding as Fire Strike these two computers can actually perform like they were meant to.

The 3.2GHz base clocked CK outperformed the AA by 20% which led to a 10fps increase in the combined test as you will see below.

As if that wasn't enough, the 4.4GHz overclocked CK rig outperformed the 3.2GHz version of itself by 15%, giving it a 10fps increase over the 3.2GHz base clocked version.

What is really mind blowing is that the $70 Pentium G3258 overclocked to 4.4GHz scored 38% better than the 2.9GHz i3-4130T CPU in the Alienware Alpha. That resulted in a 20fps increase over the Alienware Alpha.

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Sky Diver Combined FPS

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Things to consider

The reason I think that these two can be compared to one another is because the Alpha has a modified GTX 860m graphics card which is said to be equivalent to the GTX 750 TI. The actual graphics test scores of the benchmarks prove that to be true.

The reason why the Craigslist Killer rig performed so much better than the Alpha was directly related to the Physics test scores. Because of the Intel Pentium G3258 CPU's increased clock speed it performed way better in the physics tests than the Alpha's i3-4130T CPU.

With form factor and power consumption aside, the obvious winner between the two is the the Craigslist Killer gaming PC.

Think i'm wrong, have a different view on the testing/results, or just need to vent about your general frustration with PC gaming? Drop a comment down below and let me know how you really feel...