CyberPowerPC's Gamer Xtreme 4000: Now with Sandy Bridge
by Dustin Sklavos on January 4, 2011 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Intel
- Sandy Bridge
- CyberPowerPC
- NVIDIA
Application and Futuremark Performance
We already know how powerful the Intel Core i7-2600K is on its own, but what happens when we take it up a notch? The 2600K purring at the heart of the Gamer Xtreme 4000 runs at a 4.4GHz turbo speed (kept nice and cool by the Asetek liquid cooler), and this is well beyond the overclocks on the other test systems we've used. The Xtreme 8500 and DigitalStorm BlackOps are both running their last-generation i7s at a still respectable 3.8GHz, but as you'll see that's nowhere near enough to catch up to the demon inside the 4000.
The PCMark tests are notoriously biased toward SSDs, and since all of the other test towers come with SSDs for the system drive the standard mechanical drive in the CyberPower 4000 can't keep up. Once you get past those tests, though, the overclocked i7-2600K blows by the other processors. They can't even put up a fight: a 600MHz clock speed advantage on a more efficient architecture is just too much.
Oddities in Futuremark benches don't just stop at the PCMark tests, though, as you'll see when we run the 4000 through our suite of 3DMark tests.
Amazingly only 3DMark03 proves not to be CPU-limited; in every other case the overclocked i7-2600K pushes the CyberPower 4000 past the other machines. When we move on to our gaming benchmarks, though, we'll see things start to fall in line again.
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ABR - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
You mention the motherboard in this box "made the jump" to EFI. Does that mean the graphics card in it supports EFI? I.e. it can be used unmodified in a MacPro?Gothmoth - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
don´t know what a EFI bios has to do with the GFX card.i have an EFI board and can put in a 3 year old 8800 GT card.
your problem is more likely that the apple crappis build only to run with certain cards.
Stuka87 - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
Your board most likely has BIOS emulation going on to allow the old card to run. As the are extensive differences between EFI and BIOS/CMOS. Cards not supporting EFI will not function on a board with EFI only.Boards that are EFI only, without any BIOS emulation, require their video cards to fully support EFI. This is one of the reasons graphics cards for MacPro's are not standard cards. It is believed once PC's decide to finally ditch BIOS/CMOS, that graphics cards will become standardized between the two, allowing for (comparitively) cheap MacPro video cards.
Kaboose - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
Not a bad build over all, however it seems most games were gpu limited. Stepping down to a 2500k and lowering the price (or keeping it the same to avoid a price hike) would be a good choice for most gamers.Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
Right. I dont get why they used a 2600K at all since the 2500k is highly likely to overclock to the same 4.4GHz or perhaps even more due to disabled HT. $100 for 4 mostly unused threads and a 30% increase in cache seems like a waste next to a boot drive SSD. Especially if the IGP is disabled.Sihastru - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
2500K lacks HT and has 2MB of cache shaved off.Stuka87 - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
HT has limited use anyway. A hyper threaded core will not perform anywhere close to as well as a real physical core. And if gaming is the main purpose of the box, anything over 4 cores is a waste anyway. And the 2MB difference in cache most likely would not have much of an effect either for the majority of games.And since this box is designed for gaming, the 2500K would most likely perform identically to the 2600K.
Nentor - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
Actually if you look at the gaming benches in the SB review on AT you'll see that the 2500K is FASTER than the 2600K when it comes to gaming, so yeah, this is a weird choice Cyberpower made.Must be a marketing thing.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
Let's not get carried away, there. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridg...i7-2600K comes out ahead in six of the ten games, and there are certainly titles that truly fail to leverage multithreading (hello StarCraft II!). The net difference across the ten tests Anand ran gives the 2600K a 2.3% advantage--negligible, I know, but that certainly doesn't make the 2500K FASTER as you suggest; nearly equal is more like it.
Besides, people do plenty of other things with their PC besides gaming. Video encoding (x264) was as much as 31% faster on the 2600K, and the compiler test took 31% less time. 7-Zip (MIPS) and POV-Ray also give the 2600K a >35% lead.
If all you want is a fast gaming system, 2500K is probably the best bang for the buck. If every little speed boost is important, though, and you regularly run some heavily threaded applications, 2600K can end up anywhere from 10% to 40% faster.
Nentor - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
No, I am right.The 2600K has a higher clock and that is the cause of the 2.3% advantage.
Either clock them the same and test or overclock them both as far as they go. I know which one I will put my money on, wanna bet?
This box is even called the "Gamer Xtreme", so it is obvious who it is buidl for.