Packard Bell iXtreme i7803

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GFreeman

Coastermaker
This weekend I've been looking for a nice PC for my parents and little bro. I came across this model: Packard Bell iXtreme i7803. It's plenty fast for them I have to say. It has the i7-2600 which hits 3,8Ghz in Turbo mode. If I was gonna buy a PC for myself I would build myself one, but this is suits their needs perfectly. One downside: it is GPU bottlenecked I have to say.. The lad in a shop told me that the graphics card: nVIDIA GeForce GT420 was about just as powerful as the Radeon 5000 series, which frankly is bollocks. This card has a 128bit memory interface and it's about as powerful to a nVidia 6800 Ultra if you ask me. I could have done some more extensive research on that matter.

Well that's alright with their needs so far, but this means my old 3850 AGP card is much more powerful. This reminds me that something new isn't always better. New series graphics cards can be worse then older series. The upside, it has a very good powerful consumption.

Here's a fm03 bench which frankly was a little disappointing LOL: http://3dmark.com/3dm03/6421125

Here's a bench with my old system with the 3850 overclocked. What a difference haha! http://3dmark.com/3dm03/6416692
 
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Kayden

Kayden

Tech Monkey
TBH I would weigh the cost vs usage. If they are going to use it for basic needs then that's plenty. However if you were to be getting for your self I would ask how much is it and how much would it cost for you to do it yourself, if your comfortable doing such a thing. If you aren't then I would keep looking around for a better deal for you, but for your parents I think it sounds like a sweet spot. Besides getting a midrange card if they do some average 3D gaming wont be that expensive or hard to put in, especially if the box is a great deal sometimes you just can't pass on it even if you do it yourself, warranty is always an important factor. Especially now that they don't void it if you put in your own 3rd party video card like they use to, you just have to take it out before sending it in for repair.

A place I usually tell people to look for a Video Card depending on price is http://whatgfx.com/ they list everything from price to manufacturer so you can what ever you want, the way you want it. Happy hunting.
 
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GFreeman

Coastermaker
Thanks awfully! I will check it out! Well my little bro is gaming a little now and then. If we aren't satisfied with the GPU performance I can always consider putting a new graphics card in. Yes it's a nice system. It's really powerful and doesn't consume much power either. The multiplier is dropped to 16 and the vcore to 0.89v or so. When it needs some more processing power it will go up to a maximum of the 34 multi with more vcore. Intel has done a quite smart job on that I have to say :)
 
Kayden

Kayden

Tech Monkey
The Sandy Bridge is quite a nice chipset and they didn't hold back that's for sure. I have noticed though that if you have an older i7 1366 socket all ready over clocked no point in going to the Sandy Bridge, because the performance gain isn't through the architecture but the core speed of the CPU. The stock core speeds are what make the argument to go to SB if you don't like to OC at all, but still it isn't enough for cost vs performance ratio to justify it, unless you have a ton of cash to burn.

The energy saving that your talking about is present in the older generations as well, but they are much more energy efficient because of the smaller die size. That helps giving those chips the speed advantage too, wish I could have gone that route but I had the board I have laying around for almost a year wasn't going to let it go to waist.

Either way that's a powerful machine for anyone gamers included, well as long as you change the video card for the gamer. I hope your parent's like it and your bro has fun fraggin with you. (c;
 
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GFreeman

Coastermaker
I guess there's enough room in there

packard-bell-ixtreme-i6803.jpg
 
Kayden

Kayden

Tech Monkey
I don't foresee a problem. I think you have plenty of room with that card. It's a little tough to judge but I think the VC will just barely stop before the HDD bay. I think that's a good choice on a VC too btw, I'm not a big fan of ATI for multi GPU but single they are a good choice on a budget. Great job imo.
 
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GFreeman

Coastermaker
I guess the heat up quite a lot having them dual right? I can imagine the nVidia cards run cooler with alot less stream processors compared to the ATI card. I used to like nVidia cards in general, but since I'm having this 3850 I'm pretty pleased with that I have to say. One thing I don't like is the anti aliasing drivers support of the ATI cards. nVidia has better support making older games pretty with crazy anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering settings.
 
Kayden

Kayden

Tech Monkey
Actually mine are liquid cooled so I never get above 58c and even then it takes a game or benchmark pushing DX11 features. Most of the time it's only runs about 46c or so with most games and idle it's about 37c. I know for air cooled it can get up to a 50c at idle but still the performance you get with a single 580 isn't too shabby.

The drivers for Nvidia are superior I do have to say that, when AMD acquired ATI it didn't help there situation either. Nvidia are good cards but too expensive some times and that's there down side, but the upside is they do support there cards for a long time and they do keep putting out performance boosts for games for them, a lot more then ATI.
 
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GFreeman

Coastermaker
You obviously got a sweet setup sitting there, nice. How much watts does it eat full load and let's say idle/normal use? That is quite a power house, I guess it will eat some power haha! I think I'll go for this Radeon card. It has heatpipe cooling as well. The factory cooler looks decent I think.
 
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GFreeman

Coastermaker
Well this is about as far the poor thing will go lol!

http://3dmark.com/3dm03/6422165

Below the oc settings:
core: 860
shader: 1720
memory: 960
fan speed: auto

stock: 700
shader; 1400
memory: 800
fan speed auto

It does have some overclocking headroom. I've tried saving the bios for edition but nbitor doesn't like it so much lol.. That's about for this amount of vgpu.
 
Kayden

Kayden

Tech Monkey
GFreeman said:
You obviously got a sweet setup sitting there, nice. How much watts does it eat full load and let's say idle/normal use? That is quite a power house, I guess it will eat some power haha! I think I'll go for this Radeon card. It has heatpipe cooling as well. The factory cooler looks decent I think.
Click to expand...

Sorry I didn't see you post this a few days back sorry for the slow response. /c:

TBH I do not know the over all power consumption idle vs load, but I do know my power bill isn't low considering I am a stay at home dad and I game A LOT. I do get what I paid for though and that is what counts, I spent quite a bit more over air cooled but the benefits outweigh the cost I believe, as long as you can afford with out hurting yourself.

I liked the look of that Radeon as well I wouldn't say it's the best card on the market but it's defiantly got the best value for performance that I was able to find cause I did look around a bit for you too, that was good price.

GFreeman said:
Well I've just ordered the card :) It's taking a while to arrive. In the meanwhile I've done some overclocking with the 420 and improved the score some :)

http://3dmark.com/3dm03/6422159

See if I can do a little more with this thing.
Click to expand...

Glad to hear you got it ordered! When do you expect it though? You're defiantly going to have to show off that mad machines performance when your all done with it, of course. (c;

GFreeman said:
Well this is about as far the poor thing will go lol!

http://3dmark.com/3dm03/6422165

Below the oc settings:
core: 860
shader: 1720
memory: 960
fan speed: auto

stock: 700
shader; 1400
memory: 800
fan speed auto

It does have some overclocking headroom. I've tried saving the bios for edition but nbitor doesn't like it so much lol.. That's about for this amount of vgpu.
Click to expand...

Cest la vie right? I'm amazed you got as much as did with out killing it so far. Is that new machine going to be yours or your parent's?
 
G

GFreeman

Coastermaker
It's amazing though how technology develops. In a few years time you might be able to get that amount of power with way less power consumption ;) That is a sweet setup there I must say.

Yeah I like that Radeon card as well. It has a nice card layout really. They don't need the best of the best, so that's more then enough for them, lol! This PC is for my parents yes.

Oh I will probably receive the card next week, so I figured I play a little with the current graphics card. Well I know what I'm doing so no worries for that matter lol! I haven't edited the bios. It seems nbitor doesn't recognize this videocard.

The card itself has a 128 bit memory interface. I found that VRAM of that type likes to overclock with other cards as well. Ofcourse you are missing out on the bandwidth side. It games stable at 830/1660/960. So that is not too bad I have to say really. I have no intentions of killing it LOL! Temps seem fine too, seen 60 max so far. I'm playing Portal 2 with the highest settings at 1920x1080. That hugely thanks to the CPU. But there's a noticeable difference after the overclock. Before it would just stutter and I had to lower my settings.

Around 870 core it will start to hang up during benching. Even higher clocks will result in a black screen and I need a reboot lol! This is really showing it's about it for stock vgpu settings. If you where able to softmod this card to a higher voltage level you might actually get much better performance out of it and the card would show some more potential. It feels like limited but that it can do alot better if you take the limiters off.
 
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GFreeman

Coastermaker
Ofcourse I had to do some tuning on this ATI 6850. Raised the vgpu a little and ran FM03 again. After that I've tested Crysis 2. I'm able to play that at 1920x1080 with extreme settings and DX11 activated. The gaming experience the 24 inch display is quite something. I'm not used to that kindof experience haha! My little bro is pleased LOL! My own rig doesn't even touch these kind of performance levels.

http://3dmark.com/3dm03/6423652
 
Kayden

Kayden

Tech Monkey
Wow, your getting some good OC out of that card and it didn't seem to have that much cooling capacity! I know when your bro plays with you it he will defiantly appreciate all the time your putting into it! I am interested to see what you get with 3d Mark 11 though, I was really surprised my 2way SLI was pretty close to the way 4 way Xfire rob setup though. I just found out that nvidia has physics off loaded to the gpu's but I don't think that was only it but still amazing to see.

What do you think of the new power draw on the new i7 or have you not had a lot of time to look at that yet?
 
G

GFreeman

Coastermaker
Yeah! I was surprised to see you score that close to him as well. Could it be that using that many GPU's isn't supported that well by the Catalyst drivers?

I've read some reviews about the 17 2600 power consumption. I think around 160-170 watts on full load in Turbo mode isn't bad at all for a CPU like this one.. Idling with Speedstep enabled it doesn't eat much power at all. So it depends on how hard you are pushing it. The same goes for the 6850. I've read it's eating 125 watts on full load.. Well this one is overclocked so it would realistically eat about 150 watts is my guess.. That is not bad I have to say :D

Oh I'll try 3dmark11 with these settings when I visited my parents again. I'm curious about that as well.
 
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