Puget Systems Deluge Updated with NVIDIA Surround Results

Once NVIDIA dropped the 290 series beta driver, we were able to test the Puget Systems Deluge's pair of GeForce GTX 580s in triple-monitor surround. There's good news and bad news: the good news is that Surround definitely works on the X79 platform now (and configuration was surprisingly painless). The bad news is that X79 and Sandy Bridge-E offer no performance benefit, at least in our testing, over good old fashioned Sandy Bridge and P67/Z68. You can check out our results here.

In related news, we've done some additional testing of the new beta driver in a couple other recent releases. Given the poor DX11 performance in Batman: Arkham City, we were curious if the driver would improve the situation at all. The answer is no: performance remained unchanged on Jarred's test system, across all settings. Skyrim performance likewise doesn't appear to have improved. The net result is that we're still waiting on the promised patches for both titles, which should hopefully show up this week.

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Puget Systems Serenity SPCR Edition: Blissful Silence

We've had the opportunity to look at a few custom builds from different boutiques so far. While most have generally been well-rounded builds using cherry picked off-the-shelf parts and components, so far only AVADirect's Nano Gaming Cube has really emphasized the word "custom." That changes today with the Puget Systems Serenity SPCR Edition tower, a system that proves once and for all that you can have a lot of power in your desktop without it sounding like it's getting ready for takeoff.

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