iBuypower 942IL Gamer: Best of the Best?

Features
By Shelton Romhanyi, Don Woligroski
published

Media Encoding / Playback Benchmarks

ibuypower gamer 942il

ibuypower gamer 942il

ibuypower gamer 942il

When it comes to audio media encoding, multiple cores and high clock speeds are both very desirable. It looks like iTunes and lame prefer the Reactor’s higher clock speed, while Windows media encoder prefers the 942IL’s four CPU cores.

ibuypower gamer 942il

We’re seeing a massive CPU utilization difference here, most likely caused by the fact that the 9800 GTX in the iBuypower system sports an HD decoding engine, while the 8800 GTX in the Reactor does not. What the chart doesn’t tell you is that the iBuypower system is also enhancing video quality while it’s providing the lower CPU utilization! This is a major benefit of using newer graphics card technology with HD video decoding capabilities.

ibuypower gamer 942il

ibuypower gamer 942il

ibuypower gamer 942il

Clock speed vs. more CPU cores seems to be a neck and neck battle when it comes to CloneDVD and TMPG Express. It looks like the Mainconcept h.264 prefers the quad-core CPU in the 942IL over the dual-core CPU in the Reactor, however. We shouldn’t forget that the Reactor’s lower memory latency is also a factor.

Shelton Romhanyi
58 Comments Comment from the forums
  • iBuyPower has the WORST support I have ever encountered. I bought a laptop from them which had a design flaw in the lcd (screen cable was too short, opening the screen would loosen it and black out the image). They said it was caused by the user and refused to replace it. I would recommend staying far away from anything they sell.
    Reply
  • Take_Out
    ABS and Tagan are related and seem to have a good quality name in the business as well as being associated with the great Newegg.com.....
    Reply
  • Take_Out
    I meant that they were related to each other and not to iBuyPower.
    Reply
  • trackman2010
    Where are the Crysis benchmarks?
    I would think someone who's going to spend that much money on a PC would like to know how the computer fairs in the mother of all benchmarks.
    How about benchmarking some newer games that are actually a bit more demanding than the old games you're using just to show some high numbers?

    Also, why on earth would someone spend all that money when you can get the same configuration yourself for half the price?
    Tech support is never worth that much money, IMO.
    Reply
  • baracubra
    Also Alienware's top model is only a bit more expensive but it buys u soo much more bragging rights, not to mention their extremely stylish cases..
    Reply
  • baracubra
    If I was gonna dish out that much $$$ I'd go with a better named company with better support, something like Alienware and take their top model; 790i SLI mobo, Intel core 2 Extreme QX9770, 2x SLI 9800 GX2 etc...
    Reply
  • jitpublisher
    Yeah, why are there no Crysis benchmarks here?
    That was the only gaming benchmark that I was planning to take note of when I started the reading the article. This is like reviewing a new system 2 years ago and not running an Oblivian benchmark. Makes no sense?
    Reply
  • BadMannerKorea
    i was going to buy an ibuypower, but decided to make my own. if you spent 3500 on a homebuilt system, that would certainly be better than ibuypower. plus, if you look at the BBB website, they are doing horrible.
    Reply
  • tallguy1618
    I think the game benchmarks for this review absolutely sucked. I mean, comon. You know that somethings wrong when mose of the game abenchmarks are ran in the 100 FPS range. Also, I don't give a crap how these 2 systems run archiac games like Prey and Serious Sam or even Quake 4. When is Toms Hardware going to realize that they need to update their benchmarks significally? The main thing I do on PC's is game, and right now I have no idea which system to choose because of the crappy game choices for benchmarking. I was disgusted by this review and I know there are others that feel the same way.
    Reply
  • johnbilicki
    For that money I could have built an XP-64 bit system with two 2GB sticks, a raid 0 raptor boot with a TB raid 1 D:\, and saved a ton of money by getting a real quad core CPU from AMD versus an Intel duo-core or dual-dual-core. Where is the dedicated audio card? I'd skip buying Creative of course with their known desire to not support their products. I don't play any of those games and I still like seeing Oblivion on benchmarks. Where is Crysis? Even though it's not really my kind of game it's benchmarking value is rather obvious. Lastly what is the warranty on the system? Do you get five years on the hard drive like you do if you buy a couple of Seagates? Or a ten year life-time warranty when you buy memory like Corsair?

    Pre-built systems may look nice though they generally are built for people who are going to burn money once every two or three years on a new system. I'm still happy with my 939 setup and won't bother to upgrade until socket AM3 any way.
    Reply