Haswell and GK110 vs. Ivy and GK104: DigitalStorm Virtue System Review
by Dustin Sklavos on June 23, 2013 12:00 PM ESTConclusions
What we're evaluating here are really three different products. The DigitalStorm Virtue gives us an opportunity to test both Haswell and the GTX 780 in the wild, as well as a chance to see what a good Corsair Obsidian 350D build might look like.
First, Haswell. I may be unusually, possibly needlessly harsh on Haswell, but I can't help but be incredibly unimpressed. IPC has gone up generation by generation, so why is overclocking performance essentially flatlining? The Core i7-4770K basically needs to hit the same speeds Ivy could eventually hit to really justify itself. Intel didn't architect Haswell for the high end, they architected it for the low. This is an architecture that's supposed to be in ultrabooks, not in ultra-powerful desktops. We felt shafted with Ivy Bridge, but Haswell was our great white hope, and I think that's why the i7-4770K is as disappointing as it is. Ivy wasn't a big jump in performance, but it wasn't supposed to be, and Haswell was. Hopefully when I build out the custom liquid cooling loop review and take more of the heat out of the equation, the architecture can stretch its legs a bit.
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Second, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780. Not much to say here that hasn't already been said in Ryan's review. Extremely high end kit has always had a little bit of a problem justifying the expense, but the GTX 780 is a pretty weird beast. Even on its best day the less expensive GTX 770 will still have a hard time catching up to the 780, and with a little bit of TLC you can basically get a GTX Titan or better for two-thirds the price. 33% off is an awesome discount, but it's still 33% off a cool Cleveland.
Finally, the DigitalStorm Virtue itself is actually a pretty solid deal. The build we were sent is their Level 3 build, with only the crazy GeForce Titan model ahead of it. This exact system can be built on NewEgg for only maybe $200-$300 less at absolute most, so the pricing is definitely fair for what you get. But $2,563 is still an awful lot of bank, and I'm more of the opinion that gamers looking for a better deal would benefit from the Level 2 configuration. It means downgrading a few components, but the i5-4670K isn't a serious hit for gamers and going down to 8GB of DDR3-1600 isn't relevant for the majority of users. The cruelest cut is dropping from the monstrous GTX 780 to the GTX 770, but the 770 is still an incredibly capable card, and you're saving around $800 in the process. While I enjoyed my time with the Level 3 model, I'm far more willing to give the more balanced Level 2 model the recommendation. If you're looking for a gaming desktop, the DigitalStorm Virtue is a solid value for the money.
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HideOut - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
That 5ghz chip is also 220w part. Not even close to relevant to most reasonable pc users. It's a marketing gimmick.wumpus - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
The computer in question has a 250W GPU and a 1000W power supply, there is no reason to veto a 220W CPU. While I think the Nvidia 780 is a "marketing gimick" (pretty much the same additional performance/cost), it seems to be a minority opinion on this site.MrSpadge - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
That 220 W is the reason Intels dismisses such CPUs, as they'd hardly sell at all. How ever would be interested in such beasts is already covered with the current Ks and Extremes, including factory OC'ed builds.Klimax - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
220W which won't beat my 3930k on conservative overclocking 4.4GHz and which is most likely cheaper...MrSpadge - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
That's rubbish. Super low temperatures always help FETs to work significantly faster. That's why the clock speeds reached with LN2 will NEVER be possible in production untits of the same fundamental technology.And if Intel designed for significantly higher clock speeds they'd loose IPC due to the longer pipeline and would blow the power efficiency gains Intel worked so hard on during the last years completely out of the window. Just remember the Pentium 4 or nVidias hot clock versus Kepler.
Nintendo Maniac 64 - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Contrary to what everyone is saying, I and several others have discovered that Haswell is surprising fast at emulation - around 20% faster than Ivy and 30% faster than Sandy. If would be great if a review site like Anand would actually benchmark such programs because they are heavily CPU-oriented and currently are one of if not the only compelling reason for Haswell and it'd be a shame if people missed that memo.This forum topic summarizes what I describe:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1402557/haswell-is-surp...
Sabresiberian - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Yeah I agree from an enthusiast viewpoint that Haswell is a little underwhelming, and am irritated that Intel kept the glue-on method of attaching covers, but there are apps in which it crushes Ivy Bridge - and none in which Ivy Bridge is superior.As always, buy your hardware for the applications you most want to support. :)
JDG1980 - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
I agree that emulators could work well as CPU benchmarks, especially since many of them are single-threaded or lightly-threaded (so they're a real-world application where IPC is important).PCSX2 running Dragon Quest 8 would be a good benchmark. It uses two CPU threads (three if MTVU is enabled) and is very demanding, especially in busy scenes.
Gigaplex - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Running PCSX2 on potentially pirated games for a commercial review is legally dubious at best.p1esk - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
So what is exactly the value DigitalStorm brings to the table?It seems to me that they put together a few off the shelf components, and slightly bumped up the frequency. Is that all? If so, that's something anyone who reads this site can do themselves in an hour or less.
What I expect from a "boutique" computer builder is systems like the new Mac Pro, only where I can customize everything and anything.
Otherwise, no, they don't deserve extra $200-300 on top of Newegg BOM.