CPU / December 2006
Gamer Infinity SLI KO
$3,999
Cyberpower
www.cyberpowerpc.com
It?s a great time to be a gamer: Intel is taking names with its quad-core processor, and NVIDIA?s new GeForce 8800 GTX is smoking?. System builders have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of these new parts, and so have we. The first system to burst through our doors thusly Equipped is the Gamer Infinity SLI KO, Cyberpower?s top-shelf gaming rig. The Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 is plenty powerful. It runs at 2.66GHz and has a 1,066MHz FSB, four cores, and 8MB of L2 cache. Even so, Cyberpower overclocked the CPU to 3.2GHz with the help of a Cooler Master liquid cooling kit. The kit includes a single-fan radiator that sits at the back of the system And a CPU block; the rest of the PC relies on air cooling. The two 768MB Evga NVIDIA GeForce8800 GTX PCI Express cards are, of course, configured in SLI mode. The cards offer a variety of new treats, including a unified architecture that lets the GPU keep all of its brainpower busy even when working on scenes that are heavy on a particular type of rendering. They also support DirectX 10. Each card eats up two PCI bays and requires two PCI-E power connectors, so Cyberpower opted for an NVIDIA SLI-certified 750W Thermaltake Toughpower power supply .Cyberpower built this system on the NVIDIA 680i SLI chipset and added 2GBof Corsair PC2-6400 memory (two 1GBDIMMs). On the storage side of things, Cyberpower selected a 300GB Hitachi Deskstar HT725032VLA360 and follow edit with four 150GB Western Digital Raptors at 10,000rpm each (in a Striped array).Cyberpower?s stable of high-end rigs includes a variety of flashy PC cases; one of the coolest it offers is the NZXT ZERO chassis. The case includes a custom Blue Multi Tone paint job that looks like the sort of sinewy material that coats the wall sin many sci-fi movies. A window in the front panel door lets you catch a glimpse of the fan controller?s readout (the fan controller?s display features blue backlighting).Rather than yet another case window; this chassis has a huge grille covering four 120mm intake fans. The front panel houses the fan controller, two optical drives (a dual-layer NEC ND-3550A DVD?RW and a Sony DDU1615 DVD-ROM), and a card reader that includes a USB 2.0port. Two more USB ports sit on the side of the front panel. The front panel door is reasonably sturdy and the five5.25-inch bays have drive rails that will make installation a breeze. I found a decent wiring job inside the case; Cyberpower bundled most of the cables out of the way and used several cable ties to secure the power cable and SATA cables that connect to the hard drives. The cable ties kept the cords together but didn?t keep the hard drive power connectors from detaching during shipping. That?s not a big problem, but if I spent $3,999 on a system, I?d be nonplussed when it didn?t boot out of the box. Although the Gamer Infinity SLI KO produced great scores in every benchmark, it absolutely rocked 3DMark06, producing an overall score of 1551. The cards produced an HDR/SM3.0 score of7005 and CPU score of no less than4781. The system also handled the gaming benchmarks well, posting 97.44fpsin our Oblivion Outdoor test. When I kicked the cards up to 8X SLI AA and16XAF, the system posted 68.73fps in the Oblivion test, 64fps in F.E.A.R., and 141.16fps in Far Cry. The system also fared well in our Dr. DivX and Win RAR tests, finishing off the test files in 3:43and 2:39 (minutes:seconds), respectively.Hefty though the Gamer Infinity SLIKO?s price tag is, you get a great box load of components for the price, as well as an expertly built system and a stunning Paint job. And of course, the system more than delivers on performance: It clobbered our benchmarks. Now it?s just sitting around, eagerly waiting for some competition. ?
By Joshua Gulick
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Originally Posted by lookmomnobrains
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