MaximumPC 2005 06

iBuyPower Gamer-X

The Gamer-X cuts through the price tags but can’t

dent the benchmarks

A

fter a few months of reviewing

PCs equipped with bristling

RAID arrays, SLI videocards,

amazingly fast CPUs, and even the

occasional luxurious 30-inch

flat panel, iBuyPower’s Gamer-X

comes across as quaint.

You know how you feel after

landing your F-22 Raptor only

to learn that your ride home is

a Sopwith Camel? That’s how

this rig makes us feel.

For instance, we were aghast

that the Gamer-X sports just

a single hard drive. It forgoes

the standard RAID array, for

a lone SATA Western Digital

WD2500JD. Compared with

eighth-gen Seagates and

hecka-fast Maxtor drives, this garden-

variety jumbo-buffer jobbie just

doesn’t turn our crank.

And after seeing so many SLI

boxes recently, we were taken aback

at the sight of a single videocard.

We didn’t realize they still make ‘em

like that! The videocard is a WinFast

PX6800. With its core clocked at

325MHz and

the RAM at

600MHz, we

didn’t expect

it to set any

speed records.

At least it’s

of the PCI-E

variety and

not AGP.

The mobo is

a questionable

choice, as well.

Asus’ P5GDC

uses Intel’s

915P chipset and supports both DDR

and DDR2 RAM in its six RAM slots.

Four are dedicated to DDR while the

remaining two are for DDR2. The

budget-buyer’s dream would be to

run both types of RAM simultaneously ,

but the P5GDC rightly prevents you

from trying this. (Any mobo running

two types of RAM concurrently would

suffer a severe performance hit.) The

mobo supports RAID by way of the

Intel ICH6R south bridge chip—but as

we noted already, iBuyPower doesn’t

spring for the necessary second drive.

Fortunately, the P5GDC has enough

features that you won’t be wanting for

hardware. It offers onboard FireWire,

HD Audio-compliant sound, and

gigabit Ethernet. And with the single-

slot 6800 card, you get three PCI slots

and two x1 PCI-E slots should you

care to scratch any hardware itches.

The board plays host to a new Intel

Prescott Pentium 4 (with 2MB of

L2 cache); it runs at 3.4GHz—two

clicks off the top of the line. At least

it supports 64-bit extensions and NX

technology.

Performance-wise, the Gamer-X

gave us what we expected: sub-par

gaming and application performance.

For instance, compared with our

Athlon 64 FX-55 zero-point machine,

the Gamer-X ran about six percent

slower in SYSmark2004’s application

suite, 14 percent slower in Adobe

Photoshop CS, and five percent slower

in our Divx encode. But the Gamer-X

was at its worst in our gaming tests,

performing 57 percent slower than

our SLI-equipped zero-point rig. The

Gamer-X’s only shining moment was

in Adobe Premiere Pro, where it was

23 percent faster than our Athlon test

bed, thanks to the program’s Hyper-

Threading optimization and P4-

friendly code.

So what’s good about the Gamer-X?

Just one thing: the price. iBuyPower

likely knows it can’t take on the top-

end boutique vendors—whose PCs

cost as much as a car—so it has built

a decent cheapo box. Unfortunately,

we think iBuyPower missed the sweet

spot, making too many sacrifices in

the name of price.

—GORDON MAH UNG

0 20% 40% 60% 80%

PERCENT FASTER

ZERO

POINT SCORES

SYSmark2004

Premiere Pro

Photoshop CS

Divx Encode

3DMark 05

Doom 3

201

620 sec

286 sec

1812 sec

29.3 fps

77.1 fps

100%

504

189 (-5.97%)

334 (-14.37%)

1911 (-5.18%)

12.6(-57.00%)

33.3(-56.81%)

GAMER-X SCORES

Our zero-point reference systems uses a 2.6GHz Athlon 64 FX-55, 2GB of DDR400 Crucial

Ballistix RAM, two nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra cards in SLI, a Maxtor 250GB DiamondMax10,

a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS, a PC Power and Cooling TurboCool 510 Deluxe Express, and

Windows XP Pro with SP2.

iBuyPower’s Gamer-X can be

had at a low price, but it’ll cost you in performance.

PIE

PI

$1,595 ($1350 w/o display and speakers),

http://www.ibuypower.com

MA XIMUMPCVERDICT 7

Super-low price.

Second- and third-rate collection of components

do not make a Maximum PC.

UNDER THE HOOD

DISPLAY

THE BRAINS

AUDIO

CPU Intel 3.40GHz Pentium 4 660 (2MB L2

Cache 800MHz FSB)

Mobo Asus P5GDC

RAM 1GB Geil DDR400 (board supports

DDR and DDR2)

I/O ports 6 USB (2 front, 4 rear), 1 optical SPDIF

out, 1 coax SPDF out, 2 FireWire, par-

allel port, gaming port, serial port, 3

line out, mic-in, line-in

LAN Gigabit Ethernet using Marvell Phy

Hard drives Western Digital WD2500JD (8MB

cache)

Optical Sony DW-D26A, 16x DVD-ROM

Windows XP Home

Videocard Leadtek Winfast PX6800 TDH

Monitor Viewsonic VA712B 17-inch 8ms

STORAGE

Soundcard Onboard HD Audio

Speakers Logitech X-530

FINE DETAILS

Case NZXT tower with Orion XP400 PSU

Fans/extras 2 80mm fans, media reader

Mouse Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 4.0

Keyboard Logitech Elite

BUNDLE

BOOT: 55 sec. DOWN: 13 sec.

JUNE 2004 MA XIMUMPC 69