MaximumPC 2008 08

74 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC|AUG 08 |www.maximumpc.com

IN THE LAB^

REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

T

here’s a civil war brewing within the PC:

Intel says the CPU is the head honcho

while Nvidia argues that the GPU is

boss. With its Deluge-i A2, Puget shows whose

side it’s taking in this debate. This budget

gaming box spends big on the videocard but

skimps on the processor.

There’s no $1,200 Core 2 Extreme quad

core in here. In fact, there’s no quad core at

all. Instead, Puget reaches for a $200 Core 2

Duo E8400 dual core. Further insulting Intel,

the system sports a $380 XFX GeForce 9800

GTX riding in an XFX nForce 780i SLI mobo.

At least Puget doesn’t leave the stock 3GHz

Core 2 Duo as is. Using an Asetek water

cooler, Puget takes the CPU to a safe and

sane 3.5GHz on a 1,600MHz front-side bus.

You can practically do that on air cooling

alone, so the water cooler makes this a very

safe overclock.

Being a midrange box, the Deluge-i A2

lacks such amenities as a soundcard, Blu-ray

drive, and SLI (although the 780i board lets

you run up to three cards in SLI). But not

everything is low end—Puget runs with

Microsoft’s top SKU: Windows Vista Ulti-

mate. While that might sound extravagant

for such a moderate machine, it costs only

about $65 more than Vista Home Premium.

A 500GB Seagate Barracuda drive and 4GB

of DDR2/800 OCZ Reaper memory round

out the innards. If you’re wondering if 4GB

of RAM in a 32-bit OS

machine makes sense,

for the record, the Deluge

reported all 4GB as avail-

able. Most of the time,

machines loaded down

with hardware will report

only 3.5GB or even 3GB

of RAM in a 32-bit OS. Ap-

parently, Puget hit just the

right balance to make all

4GB available. The entire

machine is wrapped in an

Antec P182 case, and the

acoustic signature is fairly

quiet—not bedroom quiet,

but definitely tolerable.

Against our 2.66GHz

Core 2 Quad Q6700 zero-

point system, the Deluge

loses in every single

benchmark except Photo-

shop, where it squeaks out

a 2-percent victory. Dual

cores generally outrun

quads in Photoshop since

the app isn’t optimized for more than two

cores. In fact, the Deluge would likely have

beat our zero point by a larger margin if not

for the 10,000rpm Raptor in our baseline rig

In system, CPU, and GPU tests, the

Deluge just can’t manage to pull away from

a PC that’s almost a year old. However, you

can look at it this way: This $2,600 box is

able to compete with a PC that cost more

than twice as much to build a year ago. Of

course, you can also look at it this way: The

$5,000 CyberPower system we reviewed in

July, with its overclocked 4GHz quad core

and its quad-SLI configuration, runs circles

around the Deluge.

Our take is that the Deluge is simply un-

derconfi gured. A second 9800 GTX wouldn’t

have hurt this machine nor would some addi-

tional storage—500GB is pretty spartan when

terabyte drives are so aff ordable. The Deluge

is best suited as a gaming-only box and only

at standard screen resolutions.

On the issue of CPU versus GPU, we’re not

sold on the idea that one is more important

than the other. Yes, perhaps a dual core is

adequate for a small formfactor machine or a

notebook, but a beefy tower like the Deluge

really should have the maximum processing

potential of a quad. One glance at the bench-

marks backs that up.

In the end, we think the civil war be-

tween Nvidia and Intel is just plain wrong—

it’s too bad Puget Systems bought into it.

• G O R D O N M A H U N G

Puget Systems Deluge-i A2

What’s more important, the CPU or the GPU?

VERDICT

$2,650, http://www.pugetsystems.com

6

Competent and

affordable machine

for most games.

Underpowered for

most other apps and

underspec d for the

price.

FRESCA

PUGET DELUGE-I A2

DIET DR. PEPPER

ZERO POINT

1,241 sec

153 sec

1,540 sec

2,079 sec

26 fps

91 fps

Our current desktop test bed consists of a quad-core 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700, 2GB of Corsair DDR2/800 RAM on an EVGA 680 SLI motherboard. We run two EVGA GeForce 8800GTX cards in SLI mode, Western Digital 150GB Raptor and 500GB Caviar hard drives, an LG GGC-H20L optical drive, a Sound

Blaster X-Fi soundcard, a PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750 Quad PSU, and Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit.

Premiere Pro

Photoshop CS

ProShow

MainConcept

Crysis

Unreal Tournament 3

0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

VISTA 32-BIT BENCHMARKS

1,305 secsec(-5%)(-5%)

150 secsec

1,680 sec sec(-8%)(-8%)

2,408 sec sec(-14%)(-14%)

18 fps(-34%)

80 fps(-12%)

SPECIFICATIONS

PROCESSOR Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 ([email protected])

MOBO XFX nForce 780i SLI

RAM 4GB OCZ DDR2/800

VIDEOCARD XFX GeForce 9800 GTX

SOUNDCARD Onboard

STORAGE Seagate Barracuda 500GB

OPTICAL Asus DRW-2014L1T

CASE/PSU Antec P182/Cooler Master TX650 W

The Deluge is suited for today’s games, but its lack of a quad

core makes it a poor choice for other apps.