iBUYPOWER LAN Warrior II: NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 590 in a Small Shell
by Dustin Sklavos on March 29, 2011 3:00 PM ESTApplication and Futuremark Performance
The overclock of the Intel Core i7-2600K in the LAN Warrior II review system is comparatively mild. While a quad-core processor at 4GHz is nothing to sneeze at, Sandy Bridge tends to sail right on by that speed when overclocking. Unfortunately this is about the best our engineering sample with locked multiplier can do, and scores will reflect that accordingly.
PCMark's bias towards SSDs makes itself painfully obvious here, but at least there's a takeaway: a good SATA 6Gbps SSD is going to produce noticeably better performance and happily there are a few of those en route. Still, it's hard to say if the A-DATA drive the LAN Warrior II will ship with is going to compare to the Crucial RealSSD C300 in the review unit, so we can look at the other results and make a healthy determination of overall CPU performance from those. And sure enough, the 4GHz i7-2600K blows by all of the last generation processors as well as the stock-clocked Core i5-2500K in the Puget Serenity. Meanwhile, the 4.4GHz i7-2600K in CyberPower's Gamer Xtreme 4000 remains more representative of the kinds of overclocks we can expect to see from boutique builders, and maintains a healthy lead on the LAN Warrior II.
It's hard not to argue that 3DMark is getting long in the tooth (even with 3DMark11 running around), and 05 and 06 are both heavily CPU-limited. Still, it's not surprising to see the GeForce GTX 590 placing near or at the top of the heap every time. That the single GTX 570 in the CyberPower scores higher in several of the 3DMark versions is nothing to worry about, as the games will tell the real story.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
26 Comments
View All Comments
darckhart - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - link
everything seems pretty good here. of course, it's up to the buyer to determine value, but surely your gripe with the case is far overblown. it got the job done well. it's cheap (comparatively). i think they've done a decent job.one other thing your review concerned me with was the video part. surely you should have stepped up the res to 25x16 and started cranking AA before mentioning surround.
Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - link
You'll note when I listed my monitors, I don't have a 30"er capable of 2560x1600.leexgx - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - link
the issue with getting the monitors to work happens on my system as well and I only have 1 GTX480takes about 4-5 reboots before i can get both monitors to work and show an picture (some times it switch's between the screens on reboots when the cables are messed with unplug replug), not sure why but i know it only does it when i remove the video card and reinstall it (Dust bunny clean out)
Paedric - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - link
I'm not really into overclocking and all, but there was something I was wondering after seeing several articles mentioning the subject.Can't you change the factory overclock?
I mean, I know manufacturers should do better overclocks, since this is one of the reasons people are buying those kinds of machines, but if the one they do is rather poor, isn't it possible to improve it?
In a past review, I believe the voltage was constant, leading to a high idle draw, is it lock in the hardware, and plain impossible to change; more difficult than on custom-built rigs, or the same?
krumme - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - link
I agree.Dustin - overclock the 590! - What driver are you using.
Btw: please make a movie of it - we like action :)
ggathagan - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - link
I disagree.When reviewing a system component, like a CPU or motherboard, it makes sense to for the reviewer to spend some time trying to get the best overclock possible within the time they have.
When reviewing a system, however, the dynamic changes; especially when dealing with a boutique system from a company that markets itself in the fashion that iBuyPower does.
In that scenario, it's the *company's* job to get the most out of the system they sell you.
That is a good part of what you are paying for.
I can't speak for AT, but I certainly would have preferred that iBuyPower hold off on sending a review unit for a few days or a week and spend some time optimizing the system.
If the extra time wouldn't alter their approach to tweaking the system, that says something as well.
strikeback03 - Thursday, March 31, 2011 - link
Also, they have had a couple months of experience with SNB, why the lazy overclock there? If the reason for the rushed nature of the assembly was a late delivery of the video cards then I could see not tweaking the video card, but why was the processor not overclocked in a better fashion, given that turning the multiplier up should be easy?Jarp Habib - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - link
I'm not seeing any power consumption figures (idle, load) in the Build, Noise, Heat and Power Consumption page. I'd rather see those (even though these are desktop systems!) than wildly variable PCMark scores.sulu1977 - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - link
How reliable is this water cooling?How often do you need to replace the water?
Does it ever leak?
Does it ever cause rust?
Does it slowly evaporate and disappear?
Does the water pump ever need replacing or oiling?
B3an - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - link
How can you ask this common knowledge?How can you act as if water cooling is anything new?
How can you not use Google?
But seriously... in order to your questions:
Very, depending on the kit.
Once a year if that.
Not if done properly.
No.
Very slowly, once a year water top ups.
I've had mine for 5 years and it's fine.