Conclusion
What did we learn from the Cyberpower Gamer Dragon? A heck of a lot, and the points were more dramatic than we expected.
First off, we learned that new game titles will definitely see a benefit from the high CPU power that the Core i7-920 brings to the table. The results speak for themselves, so we can’t really be accused of brand favoritism for choosing a Core i7 system over a Phenom II in the System Builder Marathon series. The results are as plain as day: the Phenom II can bottleneck a theoretically-superior graphics system in modern game titles, and even a stock Core i7 will allow those games to stretch their legs.
Are we saying that the Phenom II is a bad buy? No. But Phenom IIs shine most brightly where they make sense: in low-cost systems that a Core i7 can’t reach due to comparatively-high platform costs. If we were going to put together a Phenom II system, we’d use a lower-cost AM2+ motherboard, DDR2 RAM, and a couple of Radeon HD 4850 cards to better realize the configuration's cost advantages. That would be a formidable low-cost system, and would stand well against any Core 2-based offering from Intel.
But back to our contender, the Cyberpower Gamer Dragon:
We have a fairly good bead on the price of this setup at the time of writing: it's a little bit of $1,700. How do we know? We priced it out right on Cyberpower's site. Now, the documentation Cyberpower sent us corresponded to a Phenom II X4 940 instead of a Phenom II X4 955 with a lot of other components that were different from our test system, claiming an MSRP of $1,499. This would not be a bad price with the operating system, warranty, and decent assembly included, if it were accurate. But it isn't.
While Cyberpower has pieced together the Gamer Dragon system with care, we would opt for the company's Core i7 offerings instead, such as the Gamer Infinity CrossFireX 6000. With a couple tweaks, we configured a Core i7-920 system with a Corsair 750TX PSU on an ASUS P6T Deluxe motherboard, complete with 6 GB of DDR3-1600, a 750 GB hard drive, and two GeForce GTX 280 cards in SLI (all in a pretty Storm CS Scout case). According to the Web site, the price of this system would be under $1,700.
Configured as such, this system will perform as well as our SBM system did, and probably a lot cooler since it won't be constricted by a tiny Micro-ATX case. At first glance, you might wonder why this $1,700 figure is so much higher than the $1,300 system we built from Newegg, but recall that we don't include the price of the operating systems in our SBM articles. When you tack on a $225 for Windows Vista Premium 64-bit, the SBM machine costs $1,525. This means that for less than a $200 difference, Cyberpower will assemble the beast for you with good cable management and a warranty for three years labor and a year for the components.
- cyberpower ,
- gamer ,
- dragon
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Seems I remember a few pages of comments here...
You were probably on the US page...
Hopefully this will silence a few critical voices - Tom's leans towards the i7 because it's a better chip, not because of bias. The proof is there for all to see.
I7-10000xxx0000x0x000 fps PII-2fps. I'm logging out of this DAMN STUPID SITE FOR DAMN EVER!
I love the term 'viable'. So does that mean anything less than $1200 is not viable for gaming?
I know where you are coming from, its just a poor choice of phrase IMO.
It was cool if they do the test with coreI7 an ATI HD4890 to see another diference! some people say core i7 with ATI rules!!!
Me thinks someone is telling porkies. Compare results obtained in this review to ones obtained in a previous one (here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/phen [...] 31562.html ) and the discrepancies are too big to justify easily
You were probably on the US page...
That's true...but now I'm curious how I ended up here...
Ah well.
Here's a list of the components in the two pc's:
Cyberpower Gamer Dragon
System Builder Marathon $1300 MicroATX
CPU
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition (3.2 GHz, FSB-200) 6 MB L3 Cache.
Factory OC at 3.6 GHz, FSB-225,
2,022 MHz HyperTransport link
Intel Core i7-920 2.66 GHz,
2.80 GHz Turbo, 133 MHz Bclk, 1.36 V (load)
Overclock: 3.44 GHz at 1.296 V (load),
172 MHz Bclk
Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P,
BIOS F4a, AMD790X
DFI LANParty Jr X58-T3H6 Micro-ATX
Intel X58/ICH10R, LGA1366
Networking
Onboard Gigabit LAN controller
Onboard Gigabit LAN controller
Memory
Kingston HyperX 9905403-048.A00LF PC3-10700
2 x 2,048 MB, 1,498 MHz, CAS 9-9-9-24 2T
G.Skill 10666CL7T 6.0 GB DDR3-1064
3 x 2.0 GB, CAS 8-8-8-19, 1.56 V
Overclock: DDR3-1378 at 1.56 V, CAS 8-8-8-19
Graphics
2 x HIS Radeon HD 4890 in CrossFire
850 MHz GPU, 2200 MHz RAM, 1 GB Per Card
2 x BFG GeForce GTX 260 in SLI
896MB GDDR3-1998 Per Card
590 MHz GPU, 1,296 MHz shader
Overclock:600 MHz GPU,
1,300 MHz shader, GDDR3-2060
Hard Drive
Seagate Barracuda ST31500341AS
1.5 TB, 7200.1RPM, 16 MB Cache, SATA 3.0 Gb/s
Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB
7,200 RPM, 32 MB Cache SATA 3.0 Gb/s
Power
Corsair CMPSU-650TX
650 W, ATX 12V 2.2
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad S75QB
750 W, ATX12V 2.2, 80-Plus Certified
Just with a quick glance, I can tell the first flaw in the logic of using these two systems to compare gaming performance between the two systems. The AMD system has only x8/x8 Crossfire while the Intel system is running a full bandwidth x16/x16 SLI. The L3 cache/cpu-northbridge is running at 2250mhz when most 955 can run in the 2800mhz range and see improvements from doing so.
this review is not objective!
the cost of dragon system could be cheaper!
it is too much pretension in all review!!!
this review is not objective!
the cost of dragon system could be cheaper!
it is too much pretension in all review!!!
Yes, yes, and yes.
Why does this review stink? The results seem to be waaaaay off the mark! Come on Toms, do you really think this is the only X4-955BE review ever? And its funny how your results are completely different to everyone else's!
I swear, its almost like one of the HD4890s had been taken out of CrossFire... Hang on a sec... why does the table read 2.2GHz for the GDDR5? That should be 3.9GHz! I think Toms have monkeyed around with the (cack) Cyberpower system! And we all know HD4890
Wow, does the site now have a Criticism Filter like the US site? Most of my post got cut off...
Wow, does the site now have a Criticism Filter like the US site? Most of my post got cut off...
Tom's are Intel's brand fanboy site. Face it. They will always favor Intel. Why are you even bothering to get justice from this site? it's pointless. Unless, of course, you get AMD to pay them more than Intel do so they can increase the results. Ban me, mod me do anything, I will say the truth.
nvidia + Intel = Tom's have full coffers. One of the largest sites (and most trusted among sheep (people) fakes result's in nvidia's favor. That is why AMD once had only 6% of market share!!! I hope that this site gets down very soon so we can restore honor and healthy competition to the market.
And by the way, did you notice that Tom's had the article that explains how to unlock AMD ONLY software called Fusion, an application that is really nice and usable. They EXPLAINED how to hack it. So, they are criminals. I hate you all. Really, I really, really, really do.
http://media.bestofmicro.com/9/R/2 [...] ry%202.png
LOL, I7 + 2xGTX280 SLI - TWICE AS FAST AS PII 955 + 2xHD4890!
I declare FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE
Lol it's like they had vsync turned on in FC2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
People, don't read this bull c r x p, this is a site you can trust. It doesn't favor anyone, it just posts the results. And sorry for many posts, I get pissed off when I see this Tom bull c r x ping.
http://www.modreactor.com/english/ [...] rhead.html
http://media.bestofmicro.com/8/R/2 [...] age031.png
http://media.bestofmicro.com/9/R/2 [...] ry%202.png