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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Abix - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
Noise results?crimson117 - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
Is a genius.demonbug - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
Heh, I just watched that with my son the other day... great article title.DigitalFreak - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
Still looks like a trash can... now with a red lid!zero2dash - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
And a bad spraypaint job to boot! o.OGranted I'm not a modder extraordinaire, but that paint job is really bad; you can see splotches all over the place on the black. They either rushed it or they didn't do even coats.
TIGGAH - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
I think those splotches are finger/hand prints. I have the silver version and my daughter pawed it over with her grubby hands and I had to scrub it to get the metal to look even again.DigitalStorm - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
@zero2dash.The black is actually just finger prints on the metal surface of the chassis. We only had the red trim pieces painted. I hope that clears it up. =]
Warm Regards,
Harjit
Digital Storm
Omid.M - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
Because of that awesome title.xxtypersxx - Friday, May 13, 2011 - link
Great Review.This system is very similar component wise to the 2600k/P8P67M-PRO system I built at launch except that I am running 2 gtx 470's. I can confirm the issues they describe with voltage stability, in order to ensure vcore never dropped below 1.39v while folding at 4.7ghz (it will blue screen if it does) I had to use a +.135v offset which would shoot the cpu-z voltage up to 1.48v if it was at full speed without a load. However, just a couple days ago I upgraded to a leaked 0708 bios dated early may (found it in a forum thread, google brings it right up) and the LLC is now rock solid. I only get a one increment warble now and it actually brings the board on part with the good full atx overclockers. While I don't expect you to upgrade to unofficially released bios versions for your review, I do recommend this for anyone running one of these boards.
Still, seeing a boutique comfortable warrantying those sort of voltages makes me feel better about pushing mine a bit more...
DigitalStorm - Friday, May 13, 2011 - link
That's awesome news. I'll share this with our team and hopefully Asus will publish an official BIOS update that will help achieve a stable overclock at lower offset settings.Cheers,
Harjit