DigitalStorm BlackOps: Almost Too Fast
by Dustin Sklavos on December 29, 2010 12:45 AM ESTApplication and Futuremark Performance
It's not unreasonable to expect that given the blisteringly fast overclock on the Intel Core i7-950, the DigitalStorm BlackOps we have on hand should dominate our benchmarks. This is only made more apparent by the Corsair Force SSD (which PCMark Vantage is going to love) and the SLI'd GeForce GTX 580s. So just how much of a lead can the BlackOps pull?
And there it is. The BlackOps posts its only loss in Cinebench's multi-CPU test, but the score is so close to the i7-875K powering the CyberPower desktop that it's barely worth mentioning. To be fair, though, the CyberPower unit costs a little over half what the BlackOps does. Of course, when we move into 3DMark we can expect to see where that price difference really comes in.
While 3DMarks 06 and 05 seem to be almost CPU-limited, the BlackOps tears away from the pack in 03 and Vantage thanks to the massive performance of the SLI'd GeForce GTX 580s. The closest competition comes from the iBuyPower unit with the SLI GTX 470s, but it's nowhere near what the BlackOps is capable of. When we get into our gaming benchmarks on the next page, that's only going to be more apparent.
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Dug - Friday, December 31, 2010 - link
I agree. This guy has got to go. We can get half assed reviews from anywhere.Dustin Sklavos - Friday, December 31, 2010 - link
You do know we read these, right?Kaboose - Friday, December 31, 2010 - link
He probably hopes so, if you didn't what would be the point of posting?Belard - Wednesday, December 29, 2010 - link
Okay, for a TOP of the LINE game system...Win7-64 bit Home edition? I'd go with at least a pro but for about $40 or so for OEM difference, might as well go for the Ultimate, no? For $3200+... might as well have the top-end Win7 OS to boot.
Zan Lynx - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
I picked Home 7 for my custom build. I looked at the features on the higher versions and couldn't see a single thing I needed.Nentor - Wednesday, December 29, 2010 - link
I used onboard sound once.You could hear the cdrom spin up through it, hear electrical noise from the videocard and numerous other sources and even instruments and vocals that SHOULD have been there in the audio were either inaudible or barely so. This was on a P35 Gigabyte board btw.
Bought a Xonar D2 not long after and never looked back. Seeing there is a market for $3600 machines without a HQ soundcard makes me weep.
Scootiep7 - Wednesday, December 29, 2010 - link
All other gripes aside, for $3500+ I would expect 8gb's of ram and a Blu Ray burner MINIMUM. And the hack job overclocking just rubs salt in the wound. Like Dustin says, wait for Sandy Bridge.Will Robinson - Wednesday, December 29, 2010 - link
The SLI 580s are a bit silly really,2 x HD6950s would have been a little more technically interesting and saved a considerable whack of money for (at least) a decent audio card,maybe Windows 7 Pro,more memory or even dual RAID 0 SSDs for some snappy fast desktop performance.Not a bad system I guess but its target audience is one I'm glad I'm not a member of...
VStrom - Wednesday, December 29, 2010 - link
If I'm going to pay that much coin for a boutique build, I'm going the Maingear route because of their customer service. There are no real proprietary parts to this build so any builder (boutique or joe user) could do the same. So all things being equal, customer service and warranty is what differentiates their inherent values. As another posted pointed out, DS doesn't exactly have a stellar customer service rep.Kaboose - Wednesday, December 29, 2010 - link
If you are spending 3.5k on a computer that is prebuilt then you probably shouldn't be. Going to newegg in quick 10 min look i pieced together a build with an i7-970, two GTX 580's, a 120Gb OCZ RevoDrive, 1Tb Spinpoint f3, 6Gb of corsair ddr3 2000 (cas 8), cooler master HAF X case, and a 1.2k watt antec PSU.$3,518.87
Comparing to our prebuilt here, this quick build will run circles around it in SSD performance, and general applications, Gaming as well, the i7-970 should overclock to 4Ghz easily with the liquid cooling (also in the budget) and the RAM can OC to 2200 easily. This build also includes windows 7 ultimate (apparently too pricey for the prebuilt here)
Overall for the build in the review it is a $2,753.86 computer with a giant price bump for the "Black Ops" moniker and a half assed OC. This exact build (or as exact as i could make it on newegg) was 2753.86 it has the same everything, case, (had to guess on the PSU as it was left out in the review), A-DATA RAM, graphics cards, CPU, motherboard ,card read, bluray, cd/dvd.....etc. i dont see any real gain in buying this over a custom built (at least with custom you can know what goes in it instead of whatever the company thinks you need. The only thing you gain is a 3 year warranty, however if you buy from respected manufacturers all of your parts should be under at least two year warranty. Lastly, even if you dont know much about computer and want a very high end gaming system (which this is to most people) you would be better off spending a month or two reading up and learning about computers and then building your own instead of buying this over priced gimmick.