Origin PC Millennium: 3-Way SLI And A 4.6 GHz Core i5
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Page 1:Mid-Tower Might From Origin PC
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Page 2:Origin Millennium: Inside And Out
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Page 3:CyberPower Baseline System And Benchmarks
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Page 4:Benchmark Results: CPU And Multimedia
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Page 5:Benchmark Results: Gaming
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Page 6:Benchmark Results: Power Usage And Noise
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Page 7:Benchmark Results: Drive Speed
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Page 8:Origin PC Millenium Versus Doing It Yourself
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Page 9:Origin PC Millenium: How Does It Stack Up?
After a long hiatus, Tom's Hardware returns to consumer desktop reviews with Origin PC's Millennium. Can three GeForce GTX 660 Ti cards and an overclocked Core i5 handle gaming at 5760x1080? We want to know if this elegant box is worth its $3,000+ price.
If you’re looking to buy (or build) a performance-oriented gaming desktop, there are a few different directions you can take. The easiest route is to opt for today’s top-end parts and a gargantuan case big enough to house what you need now, plus whatever you might want to accommodate down the road.
Alternatively, if you don’t need multiple graphics cards and don’t plan on cramming additional components into your machine, you could go small and still keep things speedy with a microATX board, a powerful CPU, and a high-end graphics card. Several companies have headed down that route lately, including Alienware with its X51, Falcon Northwest and its granite-footed Tiki, and Digital Storm’s glossy Bolt.
Boutique system builder Origin PC offers something that’s a bit in-between those two extremes with its mid-tower Millennium system. Housed in a slightly tweaked BitFenix Shinobi case with red trim and a soft rubber-like finish, it’s smaller than a full-size tower at just 18.1" tall, but still roomy enough for a trio of powerful graphics cards.
Rather than going all out with two or three pricey Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 cards, Origin strapped a trio of GeForce GTX 660 Tis into the $3,073 test configuration it sent us. Complemented by an Intel Core i5-3570K CPU sporting an impressive 1.2 GHz overclock (to 4.6 GHz), and a pair of Intel SSD 520 drives in RAID 0, we already know from its specs that the Millennium is going to be an impressive performer. Enough so, we'd suspect, to drive a triple-monitor configuration with ease.
The downside to the three-way SLI setup is that upgrading isn’t going to be as easy as it would be with just one or two higher-end graphics cards. After all, you can’t just slap in another identical card a couple of years from now; this thing is completely maxed out already. The boot drive's RAID option also has a downside. While certainly speedy, a striped array is twice as likely to fail (if one drive goes out, your boot drive data is toast). Thankfully, Origin includes a roomy 1 TB hard drive as well, providing plenty of room for backup.
- Mid-Tower Might From Origin PC
- Origin Millennium: Inside And Out
- CyberPower Baseline System And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: CPU And Multimedia
- Benchmark Results: Gaming
- Benchmark Results: Power Usage And Noise
- Benchmark Results: Drive Speed
- Origin PC Millenium Versus Doing It Yourself
- Origin PC Millenium: How Does It Stack Up?
Wow, talk about rip off...
Haha, yeah. That's about what I spent for an i5-3570k and GTX 670. I'll stick with my hand-builts and NOT pay $700 for a tech support who reads from a script.
And they're getting those parts at a discount, so you're paying a lot of money for that tech line.
And they're getting those parts at a discount, so you're paying a lot of money for that tech line.
Wow, talk about rip off...
Haha, yeah. That's about what I spent for an i5-3570k and GTX 670. I'll stick with my hand-builts and NOT pay $700 for a tech support who reads from a script.
And probably get 2xHD7950. 2 card setups are easier to maintain than 3 card setups (drivers). And the compute capability of GCN is already legendry.
Those extra 4 threads. And I bet at stock it would lose.
Why aren't temperatures shown? I was curious to see how an ivy @ 4.6 in a mid tower with 3 GPUs with modest cooling would fair...
This made me lol.
But you have a point. This thing is definitely way imbalanced. I have this funny feeling the i5 is totally holding back the tri-sli 660 ti's. You'd need something like an i7-3930k to balance that out. Correct me if I'm wrong though. Besides, I agree with others that 2 7970's or 2 680's would make more sense (but more microstuttering).
even there no performance benefit/scaling
Does anyone here really buy overpriced pre-built systems? Especially this Tri-SLI gimmick
"After a long hiatus, Tom's Hardware returns to consumer desktop reviews" there is a good reason for that Hiatus. Put this review on some other site, I'm sure BestofMedia has plenty low level dummy sites to stuff
WOW: DX11 Ultra, 16x AF, 4x MSAA, 1920x1080: min 72 fps, avg: 120 fps
Battlefield 3: DX11 ultra, 16x AF, 4x MSAA, 1920x1080: min 139 fps, avg: 174 fps
Since when WOW is more demanding than Battlefield 3? :O
WoW is CPU bound game and straining an i5 with 3 GPUs is not the best idea when playing games which need to process hundreds/thousands of players' inputs surrounding you.
They are 4 extra 'threads' not 'cores'. And there is next to no difference in maintaining 3 vs 2 vs 1 graphics card - they all us the same driver. I guess being an AMD fanboi you'd find it hard to get your head around such concepts.
Eh, did you miss the part where they pointed out that the parts were $730 cheaper than what Origin charges for the system?
I am surprised by one thing in this build, though: Pouring all those dollars into graphics cards and motherboard and whatnot, and then sticking to same ol' DDR3-1600. Not that the performance gain from switching to DDR3-1866 is big, but it would only cost you a handful of dollars. A drop in the ocean.