iBUYPOWER: 4.0GHz QX9650 and 3-way SLI 8800 Ultras
by Matt Campbell on April 10, 2008 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
iBUYPOWER - Ordering Impressions
iBUYPOWER is easy to find. Their company website comes up immediately from a web search, and often links to retail systems at other sites like Newegg or Wal-Mart appear as well. The third hit that I got was to Resellerratings.com, a popular site that ranks primarily tech businesses based on user feedback. Their six-month rating there is 5.42/10, with a lifetime rating of 6.76/10. To some degree these numbers can be taken with a grain of salt (Dell has a ratings of 1.57/10 and 4.16/10, Gateway 1.39 and 2.00, Alienware 5.83 and 7.10, etc.), but often the customer feedback is useful to read through. Most of the complaints stem from shipping concerns, but there were quite a few happy customers, and iBUYPOWER responded to several of the complaints.
Going through their website can be overwhelming, even for enthusiasts. There are a large number of base system configurations (19 Intel, 21 AMD), and a huge number of individual options for each one of those systems.
Which one do I want…?
Their cheapest "base" Intel system is the Paladin 515-SLI starting at $909. Immediately it's easy to be confused, as the case (the first option) comes "w/420W power supply", but option 3, "Power Supply", is selected as 500 Watt. Besides that complaint, working through the rest of the list shows a large variety of options. There are satellite speakers for $2, and a sub/satellite combo for $4 (600W PMPO! - I find myself doubting the quality of these). You also get some freebies thrown in; T-shirts and games are available for most configurations. The "Help me choose" options are not helpful in the least, as most simply list every specification for every item in the list. This is information overload in the extreme and doesn't provide simple comparisons.
A brief list of Pros and Cons regarding the website layout and content is as follows:
Pros
- Website easy to find
- Huge array of choices
- Generally competitive pricing
- Fair shipping rates
Cons
- Huge array of choices! Can
be confusing and contradictory in areas
- Website is visually busy
- "Help me Choose" is unhelpful
- Some low-quality items
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m2super - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
I bet if you pull 2gb of ram from the system with all the cards in you wont get this error message!Do a google search of this annoying issue quite a few people with vista 64, 4gb of ram and an sli config. The fact nvidia/ms havent done anything to resolve it is bs imo.
kuraegomon - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
I run SLI-ed GTX's, with RAID and overclocked Q6600. The only reason for a setup like this is to game at 1920x1200 or above. I have a 30' monitor, and like to game at 2560x1600 whenever possible. I believe that triple-SLI only makes sense with 2560x1600 resolutions, and you'll need the extra GPU-to-GPU bandwidth/lower latency that the 790i will provide, to really examine this. Sorry to say for anyone who bought one, but the 780i is already obsolete. (Of course, my 680i Striker Extreme is even moreso).Matt Campbell - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
Higher resolutions are in the queue for our next high end rig.Maffer - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
You just run into very annoying problem which has been with 780i quite quite a long time now. Please see this thread:http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=256404&mpa...">http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=256404&mpa...
You can find lots of people with the same problems right there. Nvidia is doing nothing to solve this crap. Some folks have switched to 790i system and problems vanished. This cannot be the solution though. Please Anandtech, if you have any powers to do something about this...at least poke nVidia around with a large trout or something :/
67STANG - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
I think people that build these "uber" machines forget their target audience: "the enthusiast". What enthusiast buys a machine like this rather than building it themself?I don't know about anyone else, but part of the fun of a high end computer is building it (at least for me). I wouldn't want to spend $5k+ on a system that I probably could have built myself for much less...
Granted it gets very high scores on benchmarks, but it would be hard not to with what is in it... I believe something could be built that could beat this for hundreds less. Pass.
abhaxus - Sunday, April 13, 2008 - link
There are most definitely people out there that buy the fastest computer available but have no clue how they are built.To use a car analogy... you are arguing that everyone who buys an Impreza WRX is stupid because you could buy the RS and put a turbo on it and go just as fast. The WRX is pre-tuned, has a warranty, and has a badge that says it's fast. These are the same people that buy a Dell XPS or Alienware rig.
To a semi-knowledgeable but not guru-level person, saying "i have an alienware pc" is a lot easier than "I have an overclocked 3.2ghz quad core pc with 2 8800GTS's in SLI"
Noya - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
Exactly...you don't buy a review article on a hardware tech site.HOOfan 1 - Thursday, April 10, 2008 - link
If these are the problems that are going to crop up and you will have to troubleshoot them yourself (which seems the case from reading the reviews on resellerrating.com) then you may as well just build it yourself and save even more money.