Im still not convinced that Crysis is cpu bound at high res considering the poster only went from 4x to 2x AA. That really isnt a whole lot of decreased eyecandy as opposed to Very High to High to Med. Lets also take into account that tri and quad SLI do not scale as well as 2-Sli. I really wouldn't come to a conclusion that it is CPU bound and I also don't buy the thought that the higher the res, the more physics are involved.
Okay not exactly great, but my brother bought an $1100 Q6600/Vista64/8800GT/2GB RAM system from them and it's been superb. Personally it actually seemed to be the same cost as buying from newegg. And the wiring was freaking immaculate. I think it's worth it if you dont want mess with building your own, installing Vista, etc.
A couple caveats, if you need more Ram grab it seperate from newegg, they overcharge you for additional RAM, and personally I would either make sure the build contains a good power supply or get one seperatly yourself.
the reviewer seems peeved that there is no anti-virus on his gaming rig.
i understand this. However not everyone uses antivirus. There was a period where windows was particularly vulverable and i was getting viruses by just viewing a jpg or by just going to a website without clicking anything. I tried an antivirus then, and was disapointed.
1. I chose a popular one, norton, and i got a virus anyway. The first thing the virus did was screw norton up royally.
2. I wanted to avoid a virus from slowing down my gaming computer, when i installed norton what was the first thing i noticed? the computer was slower...!?
3. Still found that i was vulnerable to adware, to prevent adware as well i would have to download another app that would slow down my computer even more!
4. The anti-virus was a resource hog. Memory, cpu, even caught it using bandwith to download updates in the middle of my playing a game online! This is the opposite of what i want, i want absolutely nothing running while i am gaming.
For all these reasons im almost always without anti-virus its not for everyone - i just go stick to major websites and most email services such as yahoo automatically scan email attachments. So for a few of us who are careful and are able to spot shady exe's its possible to survive without.
Actually, I think the problem is that there are 50 processes *without* any security suite running. I actually uninstall any security suites as the first step of every laptop/system I review/use, though I'm sure some people like the "freebie" (never mind the nagging that comes 3 months later).
i bought one prebuilt system for my first pc and have been building my own since then.
the most important thing for me, and what would make me consider buying prebuilt such as ibuypower, is gettting a tried and tested system that totally works out of the box. So many hardware / driver issues / bios settings issues can potentially come up when you build yourself, even seemingly silly things like picky HDDs that only would work with certain IDE cables and motherboards that shipped with a cd with bad drivers (incompatable with XP sp2) have ruined my builds for long periods while i tested every little thing.
Prebuilt is supposed to avoid all this crap and work out of the box. When anandtech reports bluescreens and hiccups in games i just stop right there, no point in buying a prebuilt if its not very very stable out of the box. Imagine after you fix some of the problems, you get a virus or something and then use the restore cd, you are restoring it to a state where it is unstable...
SP1 does not matter much. It installs all nvidia recommended multigpu-hotfixes which I had already installed. Same crashes remain after installing SP1 if I use any other driver than 174.31 or 174.51 (these also worked before installing SP1). 174.51 is just a bit faster overall than 174.31.
Did you guys bother to check to see if SP1 was installed? I know part of the review was to see how the machine ran out of the box but even some of the errors on the problems page indicate the OS was not updated. Even if iBuyPower didn't update the OS it probably would've been a good idea to do so since there's no less than half a dozen *CRITICAL* hot fixes for that system related to 4GB, Vista, video driver TDRs, SLI, virtual memory allocation etc.
Yes, these systems are for 2560x1600 resolution. I run 780i system with watercooled GTX SLI-setup to play with 30" screen. So far I found 174.51 *leaked* beta drivers to be the best solution for games (DX9 & DX10 SLI works without any crashes). "Minor" problem is that SLI must be disabled to play video in fullscreen mode or the system will freeze immediately. Problems vary with different systems though, these are just examples.
I bet if you pull 2gb of ram from the system with all the cards in you wont get this error message!
Do a google search of this annoying issue quite a few people with vista 64, 4gb of ram and an sli config. The fact nvidia/ms havent done anything to resolve it is bs imo.
I run SLI-ed GTX's, with RAID and overclocked Q6600. The only reason for a setup like this is to game at 1920x1200 or above. I have a 30' monitor, and like to game at 2560x1600 whenever possible. I believe that triple-SLI only makes sense with 2560x1600 resolutions, and you'll need the extra GPU-to-GPU bandwidth/lower latency that the 790i will provide, to really examine this. Sorry to say for anyone who bought one, but the 780i is already obsolete. (Of course, my 680i Striker Extreme is even moreso).
You can find lots of people with the same problems right there. Nvidia is doing nothing to solve this crap. Some folks have switched to 790i system and problems vanished. This cannot be the solution though. Please Anandtech, if you have any powers to do something about this...at least poke nVidia around with a large trout or something :/
I think people that build these "uber" machines forget their target audience: "the enthusiast". What enthusiast buys a machine like this rather than building it themself?
I don't know about anyone else, but part of the fun of a high end computer is building it (at least for me). I wouldn't want to spend $5k+ on a system that I probably could have built myself for much less...
Granted it gets very high scores on benchmarks, but it would be hard not to with what is in it... I believe something could be built that could beat this for hundreds less. Pass.
There are most definitely people out there that buy the fastest computer available but have no clue how they are built.
To use a car analogy... you are arguing that everyone who buys an Impreza WRX is stupid because you could buy the RS and put a turbo on it and go just as fast. The WRX is pre-tuned, has a warranty, and has a badge that says it's fast. These are the same people that buy a Dell XPS or Alienware rig.
To a semi-knowledgeable but not guru-level person, saying "i have an alienware pc" is a lot easier than "I have an overclocked 3.2ghz quad core pc with 2 8800GTS's in SLI"
If these are the problems that are going to crop up and you will have to troubleshoot them yourself (which seems the case from reading the reviews on resellerrating.com) then you may as well just build it yourself and save even more money.
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18 Comments
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OblivionLord - Friday, April 11, 2008 - link
Im still not convinced that Crysis is cpu bound at high res considering the poster only went from 4x to 2x AA. That really isnt a whole lot of decreased eyecandy as opposed to Very High to High to Med. Lets also take into account that tri and quad SLI do not scale as well as 2-Sli. I really wouldn't come to a conclusion that it is CPU bound and I also don't buy the thought that the higher the res, the more physics are involved.bupkus - Friday, April 11, 2008 - link
just what I was looking for... a three headed chicken.Yah, I could use that, too.
bill3 - Friday, April 11, 2008 - link
Okay not exactly great, but my brother bought an $1100 Q6600/Vista64/8800GT/2GB RAM system from them and it's been superb. Personally it actually seemed to be the same cost as buying from newegg. And the wiring was freaking immaculate. I think it's worth it if you dont want mess with building your own, installing Vista, etc.A couple caveats, if you need more Ram grab it seperate from newegg, they overcharge you for additional RAM, and personally I would either make sure the build contains a good power supply or get one seperatly yourself.
bill3 - Friday, April 11, 2008 - link
Oh and one major advantage at these places, is that you can hand pick your own name brand components.Contrast that with say, Dell..
strafejumper - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
the reviewer seems peeved that there is no anti-virus on his gaming rig.i understand this. However not everyone uses antivirus. There was a period where windows was particularly vulverable and i was getting viruses by just viewing a jpg or by just going to a website without clicking anything. I tried an antivirus then, and was disapointed.
1. I chose a popular one, norton, and i got a virus anyway. The first thing the virus did was screw norton up royally.
2. I wanted to avoid a virus from slowing down my gaming computer, when i installed norton what was the first thing i noticed? the computer was slower...!?
3. Still found that i was vulnerable to adware, to prevent adware as well i would have to download another app that would slow down my computer even more!
4. The anti-virus was a resource hog. Memory, cpu, even caught it using bandwith to download updates in the middle of my playing a game online! This is the opposite of what i want, i want absolutely nothing running while i am gaming.
For all these reasons im almost always without anti-virus its not for everyone - i just go stick to major websites and most email services such as yahoo automatically scan email attachments. So for a few of us who are careful and are able to spot shady exe's its possible to survive without.
JarredWalton - Friday, April 11, 2008 - link
Actually, I think the problem is that there are 50 processes *without* any security suite running. I actually uninstall any security suites as the first step of every laptop/system I review/use, though I'm sure some people like the "freebie" (never mind the nagging that comes 3 months later).strafejumper - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
i bought one prebuilt system for my first pc and have been building my own since then.the most important thing for me, and what would make me consider buying prebuilt such as ibuypower, is gettting a tried and tested system that totally works out of the box. So many hardware / driver issues / bios settings issues can potentially come up when you build yourself, even seemingly silly things like picky HDDs that only would work with certain IDE cables and motherboards that shipped with a cd with bad drivers (incompatable with XP sp2) have ruined my builds for long periods while i tested every little thing.
Prebuilt is supposed to avoid all this crap and work out of the box. When anandtech reports bluescreens and hiccups in games i just stop right there, no point in buying a prebuilt if its not very very stable out of the box. Imagine after you fix some of the problems, you get a virus or something and then use the restore cd, you are restoring it to a state where it is unstable...
Maffer - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
SP1 does not matter much. It installs all nvidia recommended multigpu-hotfixes which I had already installed. Same crashes remain after installing SP1 if I use any other driver than 174.31 or 174.51 (these also worked before installing SP1). 174.51 is just a bit faster overall than 174.31.chizow - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
Did you guys bother to check to see if SP1 was installed? I know part of the review was to see how the machine ran out of the box but even some of the errors on the problems page indicate the OS was not updated. Even if iBuyPower didn't update the OS it probably would've been a good idea to do so since there's no less than half a dozen *CRITICAL* hot fixes for that system related to 4GB, Vista, video driver TDRs, SLI, virtual memory allocation etc.Maffer - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
Yes, these systems are for 2560x1600 resolution. I run 780i system with watercooled GTX SLI-setup to play with 30" screen. So far I found 174.51 *leaked* beta drivers to be the best solution for games (DX9 & DX10 SLI works without any crashes). "Minor" problem is that SLI must be disabled to play video in fullscreen mode or the system will freeze immediately. Problems vary with different systems though, these are just examples.m2super - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
I bet if you pull 2gb of ram from the system with all the cards in you wont get this error message!Do a google search of this annoying issue quite a few people with vista 64, 4gb of ram and an sli config. The fact nvidia/ms havent done anything to resolve it is bs imo.
kuraegomon - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
I run SLI-ed GTX's, with RAID and overclocked Q6600. The only reason for a setup like this is to game at 1920x1200 or above. I have a 30' monitor, and like to game at 2560x1600 whenever possible. I believe that triple-SLI only makes sense with 2560x1600 resolutions, and you'll need the extra GPU-to-GPU bandwidth/lower latency that the 790i will provide, to really examine this. Sorry to say for anyone who bought one, but the 780i is already obsolete. (Of course, my 680i Striker Extreme is even moreso).Matt Campbell - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
Higher resolutions are in the queue for our next high end rig.Maffer - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
You just run into very annoying problem which has been with 780i quite quite a long time now. Please see this thread:http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=256404&mpa...">http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=256404&mpa...
You can find lots of people with the same problems right there. Nvidia is doing nothing to solve this crap. Some folks have switched to 790i system and problems vanished. This cannot be the solution though. Please Anandtech, if you have any powers to do something about this...at least poke nVidia around with a large trout or something :/
67STANG - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
I think people that build these "uber" machines forget their target audience: "the enthusiast". What enthusiast buys a machine like this rather than building it themself?I don't know about anyone else, but part of the fun of a high end computer is building it (at least for me). I wouldn't want to spend $5k+ on a system that I probably could have built myself for much less...
Granted it gets very high scores on benchmarks, but it would be hard not to with what is in it... I believe something could be built that could beat this for hundreds less. Pass.
abhaxus - Sunday, April 13, 2008 - link
There are most definitely people out there that buy the fastest computer available but have no clue how they are built.To use a car analogy... you are arguing that everyone who buys an Impreza WRX is stupid because you could buy the RS and put a turbo on it and go just as fast. The WRX is pre-tuned, has a warranty, and has a badge that says it's fast. These are the same people that buy a Dell XPS or Alienware rig.
To a semi-knowledgeable but not guru-level person, saying "i have an alienware pc" is a lot easier than "I have an overclocked 3.2ghz quad core pc with 2 8800GTS's in SLI"
Noya - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
Exactly...you don't buy a review article on a hardware tech site.HOOfan 1 - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
If these are the problems that are going to crop up and you will have to troubleshoot them yourself (which seems the case from reading the reviews on resellerrating.com) then you may as well just build it yourself and save even more money.