New Processors!

We've got good news! Intel's latest round of processors have proven worthy, and we are once again pleased to announce that the Ion and Reactor are now a little more powerful for no extra cost. The Ion's CPU options are now:

1. E7300 overclocked to about 3.2GHz
2. E8400 overclocked to about 3.7GHz
3. Q6600 overclocked to about 3.2GHz
4. Q9400 overclocked to about 3.4GHz

You might notice that the Q6600 is the last 65nm processor we still offer. It's still an amazing chip, and probably deserves an award from the overclocking community. If you recall, it won out over what should have been its successor, the fairly unimpressive Q9300. We expect it to maintain its position in the Ion options list until the price drops on the Q9400 in a month or so.

Meanwhile, the Reactor now offers the following line-up:

1. E8500 overclocked to about 3.8GHz
2. E8600 overclocked to about 4.0GHz
3. Q9550 overclocked to about 3.4GHz
4. Q9650 overclocked to about 3.6GHz
5. QX9650 overclocked to about 4.0GHz

That's a pretty nice spread - the price differences follow a fairly logical pattern, offering a little something for every budget.

Pricing error on the HD 4870 X2...

Big thanks go to David E. who pointed out that we used the total pricing of the HD 4870 X2 on our Reactor configuration page, when we should have been using the price difference between it and the default HD 4870 ($560 vs. $250.) The prices have been corrected, so it now costs a much more reasonable $250 extra to order a Reactor with a single HD 4870 X2, and $810 extra (total) for a pair of them. Sorry for the confusion!

Holy Price Drop! Q9550...

We always felt the Q9550 would have been our first choice for the Reactor's entry-level quad-core CPU, but it was introduced an unreasonably high price of $530. Well, we apparently weren't alone, since the price has now dropped to around $330, indicating pretty clearly that sales of this excellent chip haven't been bringing in too many bonus Hawaii trips for the Quad-Core product manager at Intel. That lodges the Q9550 at a mere $5 above the Q9450 we've been so happy with thus far. The 9550 only sports .1GHz more in CPU speed, but the real payoff is the 8.5x multiplier, vs. the 9450's 8x. That should allow us to offer a significantly higher overclock on the Reactor for the same price. We'll post some results after we've had a chance to run through a few of them...

HOLY CRAP! ATI takes the lead!

I gotta say, I was worried about AMD/ATI for a while. They still have some ground to cover (the new video cards run a bit hotter than we'd prefer) but they finally took the performance crown off nVidia's head. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 is THE card to use on a 30" monitor, and in most cases outperforms nVidia's high-end GTX 280 on smaller monitors too.

The Reactor's possible options became thus:

nVidia
1. GTX 260 $315
2. GTX 280 $450
3. 2 x GTX 260 $630
4. 2 x GTX 280 $900

ATI
1. HD 4870 $310
2. HD 4870 X2 $560
3. 2 x HD 4870 $620
4. 2 x HD 4870 X2 $1,120

(Prices are for overclocked versions where possible.)

The first tier is a draw, since the GTX 260 and HD 4870 oveclocked perform about the same. (The 260 is better at some games, the 4870 is better at others.) Then things go downhill. We knew for a while now that the GTX 280 didn't always beat out a pair of 4870's in Crossfire mode, but since the GTX 280 cost $70 less, that was to be expected. The arrival of the 4870 X2 changes everything. It consistently beats out the GTX 280, a pair of GTX 260's, and in many cases, even a pair of GTX 280's (for $340 less!) It is especially adept at handling antialiasing at 1680x1050, 1920x1200, and 2560x1600.

Consequently, the nVidia line no longer makes sense for the Reactor. As of today, you'll only see HD 4870 variations on the configuration page. You'll notice there isn't an option for a pair of 4870's in Crossfire mode. That's not because the Reactor can't do it - if you buy a single 4870 now, you have the option of adding another one in down the road (without having to change the power supply.) But as an immediate option, it makes more sense to go for a single 4870 X2 - it's less expensive and performs better across the board.