While Cryo are firmly aiming this system to the ultra high end gaming enthusiast audience, with such processing power it would be remiss of us not to focus on other uses for the system.
Rendering and Photo manipulation are also areas we will tackle in the review.
We are partnering the system with our LaCie 730 LED screen.
We would assume anyone buying this system would be using 2560×1600 resolution via a 30 inch screen, especially when paired with twin HD5870 video cards, so thats exactly what we will do today.
Thermal Diodes
Digital Sound Level Noise Decibel Meter Style 2
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech power analyser
Windows 7 64bit – all latest patches/updates
Catalyst 10.5 Driver
ForceWare 197.75
Fraps Professional
Valve's Steam Platform
Cinebench R10
Cinebench R11.5
Sisoft Sandra Professional
KitGuru Photoshop Benchmark V1(4)
3Dmark 06
3dMark Vantage
Pcmark Vantage
Crysis Warhead
Tom Clancy H.A.W.X.
Far Cry 2
Resident Evil 5
Left4Dead 2
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Aliens V Predator
Colin McRae Dirt 2
Grand Theft Auto 4: Episodes From Liberty City
Napolean Total War
Metro 2033
The system scored 5.9 with Windows own performance measuring system … it just gives a final score based on the lowest performing component. No ‘law of averages' applied here. We feel this measuring system is flawed, especially when you disable the secondary card and score higher in the graphics benchmark!
Just what we like to see: no crapware, no system hogging security software suites and no stupid trials preinstalled. System builders take note, Guru's like to see this.
All benchmarks and test results were gathered across five individual runs and averaged out to ensure a consistent and accurate set of results. On some pages in this review we may include some results extrapolated from previous testing … this is not directly comparible as the core systems are different, but they are included to give some rough performance indicators.
System 1:
Intel Core i7 980X
Asus Rampage III Extreme Motherboard
XFX 5870 1GB Black Edition
AMD reference 5870 1GB
AMD reference 4870 X2
nVidia reference GTX 295
nVidia reference GTX 285
(3×2GB) 6GB Crucial 1600mhz Ballistix Tracer
System 2:
Zotac GTX465 Graphics Card
AMD Reference 5850 Graphics Card
AMD Reference 5830 Graphics Card
Intel Core i7 875K Processor
Intel DP55WG Motherboard
Crucial 2×2gb (4gb) Ballistix Tracer Memory – running at 1600mhz
Coolermaster 700W PSU
Intel 160GB SSD Drive
2×500GB Western Digital Hard Drives in Raid 0
Silverstone Raven 02 Chassis
System 3:
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition
MSI 890 FXA-GD70
Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7
Crucial Ballistix Tracer (4GB)
Sapphire Toxic Edition HD5850
System 4:
Sapphire HD5850 Toxic 1GB Edition
Intel Core i7 975
Coolit ECO A.L.C.
Asus Rampage III Extreme Motherboard
6GB Corsair DDR3 1866mhz Memory
Intel 160GB SSD Drive
Lacie 730 30 inch screen.
Western Digital Raid 0 (2×1TB Drives)
Enermax 1250W Revolution PSU
Lian Li Armorcase
System 5:
Asus Rampage III Extreme
Asus Rampage II Gene
1.5TB Western Digital x2 Raid 0 External USB/eSATA/Firewire unit
Corsair H50
CoolIT ECO A.L.C.
Intel Core i7 980x
Intel Core i7 975
Intel Core i7 920
Intel Core i5 750
Radeon HD5870 1GB
6GB Corsair Dominator GT
ATI 5870 1GB Graphics Card
Enermax 1250w Revolution PSU
160Gb Intel SSD