iBuyPower Valkyrie CZ-17 Notebook Review: MSI and iBuyPower Tangle With Alienware
by Dustin Sklavos on August 21, 2012 12:01 AM ESTGaming Performance
Given the generally known performance of the GeForce GTX 675M powering the iBuyPower Valkyrie CZ-17, it should come as no surprise that it continues to be a stellar option for gamers who want to turn all the settings up. It's only in our "Enthusiast" benchmark suite where we'll see the 675M even start to choke.
While the Alienware M17x R3 seems to consistently perform ever so slightly better, the CZ-17 still puts in a killer showing above and beyond the competition. Every game is exceptionally playable at 900p and typically with room to turn settings up a bit more.
Interestingly, the slight dip in performance from the M17x R3's GTX 580M continues with the CZ-17's GTX 675M virtually across the board. Arkham City in particular is still playable, but it takes a massive hit. We retested over and over again to make sure, but those results continued to be a bit on the low side. It's tough to gauge exactly why, but my guess is that Arkham City is having driver issues. Everything else is fine, but it looks like to really go hog wild we'll still need to go for something beefier like the GTX 680M.
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JBird7986 - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
"keep in mind that way back when the Mobile Athlon 64 was launched, eMachines/Gateway was doing roughly the same thing by taking notebooks built by Arima and rebranding them."I still have my old eMachines M6811 and it runs like a champ since I upgraded the RAM to 1.25GB. I'm currently using it as a Windows 8 test machine since I have a newer laptop. It was a crazy awesome laptop for its day. Hard to believe it's 8 years old now.
Akaz1976 - Friday, August 24, 2012 - link
Those benches are missing. Did it not run on that PC?seapeople - Saturday, August 25, 2012 - link
I thought you guys were going to do throttling reviews on your laptops going forward considering that it's a huge metric of performance in today's world of under-cooled over-turbo'ed laptops.I was very interested to see how a thicker laptop like this does with full CPU/GPU + gaming loads. Now I realized you did noise/thermals, and the thermals looked good, but again it's impossible to know whether this is because the cooling is so good the laptop can run full blast without issues, or whether the laptop is actually throttling some to target lower thermals. Given this is a gaming machine I expect the former, but it would be cool to know for sure.
In summary, please don't giveth (the awesome throttling reviews) and then taketh away!
BlueBomber - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
The price of the laptop is alright, but I honestly wouldn't want to purchase anything from Ibuypower. They've seriously got some pretty bad horror stories out there. When I was buying my first gaming pc a few months ago I was really looking at going with Ibuypower. The price was right and I like theit options, but after reading all stories about them i decided not . A few people who had horrible experiences with IBP also recommended going with another company, Ironside Computers instead, and I'm glad I did. The price was better then IBP considering they have free shipping, and the computer arrived in perfect condition. I couldn't be happier.Drittz121 - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link
Just do yourself a favor. STAY AWAY from this company. Yes they look good. But when it breaks and it WILL. All they do is give you the run around. They have had my system for over 2 months trying to fix the garbage they sell. Worse company out there for support. DONT BUY