To test the performance impact from DES CPU throttling, we ran a couple of synthetic system benchmarks including the new FutureMark PCMark Vantage as well as PCMark 05. Of course, we will not leave out the ever popular 3DMark 06 benchmark either or LightsMark 2007 which, you'll see, is as dependent on system performance as it is on graphics hardware.

In 3DMark 06, there is an impact of 510 points from CPU throttling.

PCMark 05 tests system performance and here, the CPU throttling results in a drastic 1500 point gap.

The latest PCMark - PCMark Vantage - The impact on the score is approximately 18%.

At 1280 x 1024, enabling DES results in a 20 FPS penalty in LightsMark 2007.

In SuperPi 8M, we see an extremely large performance impact. Clearly, throttling was at its maximum as the software only sees the CPU load as 25% (1 in 4 cores)