DigitalStorm Enix: Phenomenal Cosmic Power, Itty Bitty Living Space
by Dustin Sklavos on May 12, 2011 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Intel
- Sandy Bridge
- SilverStone
- DigitalStorm
Gaming Performance
The last time we had a pair of GeForce GTX 580s on hand running in SLI was from DigitalStorm, but with the advent of Sandy Bridge that setup found itself surprisingly CPU-limited in some cases. With an overclocked i7-2600K backing them up now, the Enix should have no trouble cleaning house. We'll start with our "high" preset, which tends to be the most CPU-limited when dealing with massively powerful boutique gaming machines.
Expect this trend to continue. StarCraft II is the only game not to pull 100fps or better, and even that's within striking distance. A minor overclock on the graphics cards should be enough to push it over. Now see what happens when we add antialiasing to the equation with our "ultra" benchmark suite.
Inexplicably, Origin's Genesis with its much weaker graphics subsystem still manages to steal a win in STALKER, but those results were abnormal even when we recorded them. In all other cases, though, the Enix maintains a healthy lead over the other systems we tested.
Nobody buys $1,200 worth of video cards alone just to run them at 1920x1080, though. To put the proper amount of stress on this graphics subsystem, we've added benchmark results of the Enix running at 5760x1200. At this point it's worth mentioning that whatever quirks NVIDIA had with their Surround implementation seem to have been worked out with the 270 series drivers; we had no issues getting the Enix up and running in Surround.
Discounting the again abnormal results of the Origin Genesis, the Enix pretty much reigns at the top of its game in each test, offering excellent performance even in the notoriously punishing Metro 2033. If you're interested in multi-monitor gaming, the Enix configured with SLI GTX 580's is definitely one way to get there. Naturally, the same hold for any other vendor using SLI 580 cards with an overclocked 2600K CPU, but we have to credit DigitalStorm for showing what is possible.
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randinspace - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
I think his point was that they'll just give you what they value it at when it dies, which a lot of companies do in other industries now that products and parts don't stay on the market indefinitely.Although even if they decided on a flat $300 or so they should be covered by inflation, the profit they made off the rest of the unit as a whole, insurance, tax write-offs, etc.
fingerbob69 - Friday, May 13, 2011 - link
I don't know if US law is different to UK law in this regard but if the cpu was to die during the 10 yr guarantee period, in say year 9, then DigitalStorm would be obliged to replace it with an equivalent chip ...or better.As the customer, I would interpret that to be Intel's latest/last mid range release. So for example, if I had had a duff i7-750 in a DigitalStorm unit, with that chip having gone eol some years past, I would today be expecting a 2600k as replacement...which of course means a mobo change also as the two are integral to each other.
Belard - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link
If you go back 5 years ago... the TOP Dog CPU was the Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800, which was about $500 USD.Today, a $60 AMD X2 bottom end CPU is just as fast and its a 1 year old CPU. So it takes about 3~4 years for a $500~900 CPU to be replaced by a $100 or less bottom end model.
Is there a typo, don't recall an i7-750. An i5-750, yes.
Common sense, they'd have to replace the board and maybe the memory too if an O/C CPU dies. I'm sure they'll be updating the BIOS with better controls ASAP still. If in 5 years, they need to replace the CPU, as long as its faster - even at $60, it'll be fair. With 16GB costing about $200 today, it should be about $20 in 10 years :)
LOL... you'll be OLD and saying "I remember the says when we had 2 core CPUs! Imagine that! Can't imagine how I got anything down with 3Ghz Quads"
Would warranty of the CPU cover the labor to replace it and the system board?
qwertymac93 - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
Hmm, dual 590s? trade those for dual 6950's and upgrade the SSD to a 240GB vertex 3, then we are talkin'.qwertymac93 - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
Meant 580, Not 590. Man, not having an edit feature sucks...MeSh1 - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
No peek inside?arthur449 - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
In Silverstone's FT03 manual, they strongly recommend removing the angled 120mm fan shroud under the video cards and mounting a pair of 80mm fans in its place when using two cards in Crossfire/SLI.Azfar - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
Err..i'm a bit confused looking at the optical drive bay. the conventional drive won't work at this slot type....right ?JarredWalton - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
Correct; you need a slot-loading slim laptop drive, which adds to the overall cost.Zap - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
It isn't too bad a cost for a combo drive. Try pricing out (or even finding these days) a slim slot load BD burner! Back when the Panasonic one was available, they were running close to $600 for just the bare drive!I did a quick price search and the Optiarc used in this DigitalStorm rig runs about $150. Expensive? Yes, however not exorbitantly so.