One graph (shown after the break) has an FX-74 gobbling what looks like near double the juice of a Core 2 Extreme QX6700 chip for comparable (or lesser) performance values.

ENGADGET: AMD's Quad FX platform: some details and doubts

When you pack Intel's blazing new Core 2 Extreme processor and a pair of top-of-the-line nVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX graphics cards into a single gaming desktop, you can pretty much expect it to post impressive benchmark numbers.

ENGADGET: Alienware's Area-51 7500 gaming desktop reviewed

The folks there got their hands on a pre-release version of the system, loaded with a Core 2 Extreme QX6850 processor factory overclocked to 3.67GHz, 4GB of Corsair dual channel DDR2-8500 RAM, and two GeForce 8800 Ultra cards running in SLI mode, among other desirable specs.

ENGADGET: HP Blackbird 002 gaming rig reviewed