content: They make it easier to test a specific component of a system. For example, in the article AMD references the performance of the total system -- but what graphics card system are they referring to? Are they leveraging the APU I'll never use in their benchmark? Are they comparing it to Intel's APU, which I don't care about? AMD is definitely right on one count, though: you should never trust a single benchmark from a single company. This is why I appreciate write-ups like the ones Tom's puts together where they list 15-20 synthetic benchmarks along with some real-world timed events. Of course, the problem there is that AMD doesn't just get beat up at SYSMark, it generally loses across the board, and the only thing that varies is by how much, which really stinks because chips were a heck of a lot cheaper back when the X2's were eating Intel's lunch. Now that's it's been awhile the price on a good processor is going right back up.