I guess the bench was significant to me because I changed LITERALLY nothing else.
If it was just a score increase from 2000->5000 it wouldn't mean as much, but improving from 12FPS to 26FPS under some very demanding graphics was a significant jump. Likewise, I was able to firewall my sliders to the right on ED and PC without impacting performance.
I agree that benchmarks aren't the be-all and end-all of comparisons, but I don't think it's fair to entirely discount them like you suggest. In my case, I think the raw score and FPS improvements speak for themselves. I didn't resort to any trickery to improve my secondary score which (IMO) would invalidate the testing method anyhow.
