Overclocked PC Gaming

GTX 470 & 480 - another paper launch from nVidia ;-)

2010-03-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

Yes, we're excited to finally see a new top-drawer and next-to-top-drawer card from nVidia. The benchmarks are looking good, and clearly nVidia is still on top of their game. Unfortunately, they just can't seem to stop launching new products without the actual products. Like Gandalf said - "Expect me when you see me!" Our best guess is April 10th for real-world availability, but we'll update as we hear more...

USB 3.0 and SATA 3 arrive!

2010-02-18T08:44:00.000-08:00

Although we tend to favor EVGA when it comes to choosing motherboards, Gigabyte and ASUS occasionally offer new tech a bit before EVGA, and this is the case with the new USB and SATA bus speeds. The Ion build page now includes an option for the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6 on the Ion, and the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5 on the Fury. Hopefully EVGA will follow suit soon.

Are the new bus speeds worthwhile?

USB 3 + SATA 3 does indeed produce significant transfer speed increases - moving data from a USB 3 external drive to an internal SATA 3 drive is about three times as fast as using a USB 2 port.

Bear in mind that Windows 7 does not yet seem to have support for booting off of some or all of the SATA3 controllers currently available, so don't get too excited about a SATA3 RAID 0 boot volume just yet...

ATI (well, AMD) steps up!

2009-12-04T09:54:00.001-08:00

New video cards aren't always something to get excited about (remember the 9800 GTX+?) but ATI's 5000 series is looking very, very interesting.

The company needed some wins, having lived in Intel's CPU shadow for so long. ATI's 5000 series brings DirectX 11 to the table - something that nVidia has yet to do. As with the move to DX10, it's anybody's guess as to when, or even if, there will be real-world benefits to DX11 capability. DX10 took a long time to be adopted by the game developers, and when it did, the extra eye candy made a lot of PCs run more slowly. Still, DX11 has a lot more potential to speed things up instead of slowing them down, and our advice is to go with ATI for now, at least until nVidia catches up.

The 5000 series also offers Eyefinity - the ability for one card to drive three monitors at the same time. There is even emerging support for Eyefinity in Crossfire mode (currently only in the 5970). It's not something most of our customers are clamoring for, but it's another ATI first, and adds to the value of the 5000 line. Weigh that against nVidia's PhysX if you're looking for brand-specific options.

There are five ATI cards in our lineup now. The first two are recommended for gaming at 1680x1050 or lower resolution (typically that means 22" monitors or smaller):

"Juniper" architecture
HD 5750 - 700MHz, 1GB of VRAM
HD 5770 - 850MHz, 1GB of VRAM

Both cards offer good performance. The 5770 offers about 15% more performance for about 15% more money, so choosing between them is really more about your own personality than anything concrete.

The remaining three cards are based on ATI's "Cypress" architecture (Juniper's big brother). Our minimum recommended card for gaming at 1920x1200 (usually 24" monitors) is the 5850:

HD 5850 - 725MHz, 1GB of VRAM

That leaves two super-expensive cards at the top. The 5870 and 5970 feature the same type of GPU, but the 5970 has two of them, essentially offering a Crossfire setup on a single circuit board (we were expecting it to be named the 5870x2, to keep up previous naming convention.) The 5870 is probably overkill in most 1920x1200 situations (the 5970 definitely is) but you'll want at least one of these if you're gaming at 2560x1600 (usually a 30" monitor).

HD 5870 - 875MHz (overclocked from 850MHz), 1GB of VRAM
HD 5970 - 725MHz (to reduce heat from the 2 GPUs) , 2GB of VRAM

As always, we like to point out that the industry likes to bill dual-GPU cards as having twice as much VRAM as they effectively have access to. Yes the 5970 has 2GB of VRAM, but as it is split evenly between two GPUs in Crossfire mode, you're actually working with 1BG of effective space, just like the 5870. This means that when playing games that perform poorly under Crossfire (and thankfully such situations are becoming more rare) the 5870 will outperform the 5970. If you're planning to play many different games in the future, the 5970 would give you a bigger overall benefit, but if you're buying a PC with one or two particular titles in mind, check out those interwebs to make sure Crossfire works well with them.

P55 vs. X58 (or Ion vs. Fury (or what is Intel's problem?!))

2009-09-13T19:23:00.000-07:00

OK,

So Intel came up with a brilliant marketing strategy - let's supplement our i7 line of CPUs with some more i7's, but those new i7's will use a brand new motherboard and CPU socket. Oh and let's introduce the i5 too, but lump it in with those new i7's, which by the way will use faster memory, but drop to dual-channel instead of triple-channel. The new i5/i7's will have a similar price/performance ratio to the old ones, and the fastest of the old ones will still be faster than any of the new ones.

HUH?!

Part of our job here is to chew through all of the particulars for you so we can offer you nice clear choices, and apparently that really wrankles Intel's heinie, 'cause they're making it a lot more difficult than it needs to be. Here's a simple chart that we hope will help clear up this PR fiasco. We're going to show you just the cost of the CPUs paired with a comparable motherboard, so you can see how the price/performance of these two families shakes out. To clarify, the CPUs listed on the left (which we offer in our Ion model), require a P55 motherboard, whereas the CPUs on the right (which we offer in our Fury) require an X58 motherboard.

To illustrate, $320 gets you an i5 750 and an entry-level P55 motherboard, whereas $1,400 will buy the top-drawer i7 975 plus a high-end X58 motherboard.

BTW, don't forget that the i5 does not have hyperthreading (HT lets a quad-core CPU act like an 8-core CPU.) All the others do. Net effect on gaming = nil (for now).

Since Uberclok went online a couple years ago, our models were separated by CPU type. Now the most logical method is to separate by motherboard type, since that's how the i5/i7 family is split. The prices listed above show the combined total of CPU and motherboard (in each case, we paired the level of CPU with the same level of motherboard.) The trouble here is that you can't always choose a model based solely on budget at the moment. The i5 is clearly the choice for the budget-minded, and the i7 975 is the only choice for top-performance. Things get muddy in the middle though. The i7 860 only offers a .14GHz speed increase over the i7 950, and there's very little difference between the 870 and the 950. There are some great architectural improvements with the P55 chipset, and you can read about them at arstechnica, AnandTech, and Techreport, but from a gaming perspective, they aren't going to make a noticeable difference in framerates. Consequently, take a look at the footnotes we put in that chart, and let them influence your decision.

And as always, feel free to email us at info@uberclok.com or call us at (877) 211-4235 with any questions.

New Intel Processors!!!

2009-09-11T14:17:00.000-07:00

As you may have read, Intel released a new set of CPUs this week. We'll be updating our site tomorrow to offer the new chips, but I wanted to take the opportunity to chat about what's new:

The old i7 chips were known as Bloomfield, and fit into socket 1366 motherboards, which ran on the Intel X58 chipset. The new CPUs "Lynnfield" are split into two options - the single "i5" 750, and two "i7" options, the 860 & the 870. The primary differences between the i5 and i7 chips (aside from the fact that the i5 is slightly slower than the slowest i7) is that the i5 does not support hyperthreading. (Hyperthreading makes a quad core CPU act as if it has 8 cores.) These new chips fit into socket 1156 motherboards, which use Intel's new P55 chipset. Bear in mind that P55 motherboards are generally less expensive than X58 boards, so going with Lynnfield chips reduces the cost of the PC a bit. So here is the entire Intel lineup as of today:

i5-750 2.66GHz $210 P55/1156
i7-920 2.66GHz $220 X58/1366

i7-860 2.80GHz $300 P55/1156

i7-950 3.06GHz $570 X58/1366
i7-870 2.93GHz $580 P55/1156

i7-975 3.33GHz $999 X58/1366

The memory controller on the new CPUs is a little bit faster than the old ones. While it's true that the new chips only support dual-channel memory (vs. triple-channel on the 1366 chips) that won't affect gaming performance until we start seeing games that stress three cores or more simultaneously - and that's still years away.

That means the new Lynnfield/P55 CPUs will give you more bang for your gaming dollar right now. It also means that you're opting out of a simple chip swap to go 6-core when those chips come out next year - P55-based machines will be limited to quad core. Personally, I don't see that as an issue, since by the time games can really use more than four cores, you'll be buying a new PC anyway, but if you want to be able upgrade to a 6-core chip next year, go for an X58-based PC.

In addition, if you're going for a high-end SLI or Crossfire rig, you'll want to stick with the X58 chipset, as that's one rare case where the X58's faster PCI bus will make a difference. I'm talking about a pair of GTX 285's, GTX 295's, or ATI 4870's 4890's, or 4870X2's. (Triple-GPUs of any kind would qualify too.)

Here's a reality check since the majority of our customers are gamers - none of the CPU options you pick are going to have anywhere near as great of an effect on your gaming performance as your video card choices. The only way to get CPU-bound on today's games is to throw $400 or more worth of video cards at a 19" or smaller monitor, at which point you should call us so we can point your money in a better direction.

So our advice: Go for the new P55/1156 chips unless:
A. You want to be able to drop in a six-core next year, or
B. You want to do a high-end SLI/Crossfire rig, or
C. You want the fastest PC possible (which is still the i7-975)

Happy hunting!

Strange Website Problem Resolved...

2009-08-28T08:35:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have been unable to view our site or email us for a week or so - there was some sort of routing issue with the servers that host our site. Our hosting company has fixed the issue, and assures us it won't happen again. Sorry for the inconvenience.

HOORAY! (Or make that....hooray.) New i7 CPUs!

2009-06-16T13:22:00.000-07:00

In a move that is sure to amaze and astound almost no-one, Intel has essentially bumped the speed of its mid-range and 'extreme' edition i7 chips by a mind-leaving-alone 4%!

To be fair, any speed gain for no extra cost is a good thing, but as CPU generational releases go, this one's a yawner. The i7 950 has a base speed of 3.06 GHz, compared to the 2.93 GHz i7 940 it replaces. At the top of the line, the i7 975 starts at 3.33 GHz, compared to the now defunct 3.2 GHz i7 965.

The really good news isn't that the new chips have a marginally better base speed though - it's that all current i7 chips (including the still highly-recommended 920) are now being produced with Intel's latest stepping: D0. (That's 'dee-zero'.)

The D0 chips are particularly good at overclocking, so we should start seeing our average OC go well above 4.0 GHz on the 950 & 975, and it should become very unusual for us to not hit 4.0GHz on the 920's. So the new chips really are worth getting excited about after all!

New Cases!

2009-05-31T23:54:00.001-07:00

Allrighty - it's a bit overdue I think, but we've refreshed our case offerings. As usual, we've chosen with three main precepts in mind: cooling, functionality, and appearance. (Well, and quality too, but we figured that goes without saying.)

Here is our new lineup, available for the Ion and the Fury:

Mid-size towers:
Antec 300
Cooler Master HAF 922
Lian-Li PC-7FW
Antec 902
Cooler Master Scout

Full-size towers:
Cooler Master HAF 932
Antec 1200
Cooler Master ATCS 840
Silverstone Raven RV01
Silverstone TJ09-BW

It is with a heavy heart that we retire the venerable Antec 900 with which we launched our company. With the success of the 902 revision, there's not really any justification for keeping it in production. For the time being, I will have to console myself with the daily interaction I get with my 900-clad primary gaming PC on my desk. Rest in peace, friend...

PS - in order to facilitate case options and to be able to tell you more about the cases themselves, we're breaking them off into their own category on the store. If you want a different case than our default Antec 300, you'll need to add the Fury or Ion to your shopping cart, then click on 'Choose a Case' and add it too. Take a look - we're now able to give you a ton of more information on them...

Price drop!

2009-05-29T22:38:00.001-07:00

Greetings! I know I've been quiet on this page for May - blame the economy and the effect it's having on the gaming PC industry. And by 'effect' I mean the Coming of the Apocalypse.

OK, maybe it's not that bad (none of us have actually been consumed by Hellfire) but as luxury goods were one of the first things to get hit hard, most of us in this industry are taking bold steps to stay in the game.

On the plus side, prices have been steadily dropping for months, and now that they are universally as low as they're going to get, now is literally the best time possible to buy a gaming PC. Which brings us to today's topic - new Fury pricing! We're introducing a price drop for the Fury that makes it the best i7 deal in the U.S. today. You can technically find a cheaper i7, but not at the speeds we ship. You can now have a 4GHz i7 for less than $1,600 - and believe me, I never thought I'd be saying that! Happy shopping!

New ATI Cards - HD4890!

2009-04-02T23:12:00.000-07:00

ATI launched their latest high-end card, the HD 4890. For $265 you get 1GB of GDDR5 video memory, and a single GPU running at 900MHz (overclocked from 850MHz). That's much faster than the previous ATI record holder, the HD 4870X2 (overclocked from 750MHz to 800MHz). Of course, the 4870X2 still costs quite a bit more ($450-ish) since you get two GPUs on the same card, but since the benefits of the 4870X2 rely on games having been optimized for Crossfire support (and not all of them have been) you might want to seriously consider the HD 4890 if you're interested in the very highest performance you can get.

You can also compare the new card to the $200 HD 4870 with 1GB of memory, which runs at a significantly slower 780MHz, which we would recommend for gaming at resolutions of 1680x1050 or lower.

On a side note, nVidia announced its latest video card today too (the GTX 275) but as it won't be available until the middle of April, we'll save that for later. The HD 4890 is available as an option on our Ion and Fury models immediately.

At last - something new! GTS 250 cards...

2009-03-11T09:02:00.000-07:00

The nVidia GTS 250 hit distribution channels yesterday!

Well, I'm sort of happy to have something to talk about after a fairly long stretch with no new options, but the truth is, even though nVidia has a new card on the market, there isn't really much new about it. The GT200 architecture is at the heart of their flagship high-end cards (GTX 260, 280, 285, and 295), so what will really mean something for the mid-range sector is a more affordable version of the GT200 - which isn't now.

What happened now is nVidia took their 1 generation old G90 architecture and repackaged it in a more energy efficient product than the 9800 GTX+ (which is being replaced as of today). The good news is, in addition to using less power than the 9800 GTX+ its memory runs a little faster, and it's $50 cheaper, which was a long time coming (the 9800 GTX+ should have dropped in price long ago.)

Seagate Hard Drives - Problems?

2009-01-28T16:50:00.001-08:00

As some of you may have noticed there's been a fair bit of hoopla across the internet lately about a firmware bug in Seagate 7200.11-series hard drives. Some 7200.11 drives have indeed experienced "bricking", (an error which causes them to cease functioning altogether) but so far none of our customers (or us) have seen the problem occur on an Uberclok PC. From what we can tell through our own experience, as well as through reading accounts on the internet, this is happening mostly to the 1TB model, and only rarely happening to the 500GB and 1.5TB models we use, if it really is happening at all. (Uberclok uses Samsung 1TB hard drives.)

We have a lot of confidence in Seagate - we have experienced a very low rate of drive failures with their products, and their price/performance ratio is excellent. Nevertheless, Seagate shot themselves in the foot by releasing a firmware update for these drives that caused more trouble than it solved. Consequently, their image took a bit of a hit this week, and we're left with the harsh reality that some customers are going to want another choice. Starting tomorrow, we will offer alternatives to our Seagate hard drives.

GTX 285 now shipping!

2009-01-16T05:37:00.000-08:00

It lagged a bit behind its dual-GPU sibling (the GTX 295) but the world officially has a new fastest single-GPU card - the GTX 285! We now offer it on both the Ion and Reactor, and personally, I'm a bit more excited about this one than the 295. It's faster, has more memory, and works its magic on all games and applications (as opposed to the SLI-on-a-stick method employed by the 295 - not all games and apps respond well to SLI.)

There doesn't seem to be any reason to offer the GTS 280 any longer, but if the pricing drops enough, we may bring it back.

Interesting Game Review...

2009-01-09T03:45:00.000-08:00

Not that this has a WHOLE lot to do with our business, but I thought I'd point out an unusually provocative review that happened over at Official XBox Magazine. Their review of Dead Space, by author Meghan Watt, came out with a surprising 6.5 out of 10 for the AAA-title game back in October. The number was surprising because it was such a mega-hyped game before release, and so many other reviewers REALLY liked it (the aggregate score at metacritic is in the mid-80's).

I stumbled across the review because I'd finally gotten around to loading it up on my Fury tonight, only to come to the astonished realization that it was, for me, a steaming pile of crap of a game, especially compared to what I'd been playing recently (Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Mass Effect, and Call of Duty 4). The very first thing I noted (and this is irrelevant to the review) was that it was unmistakably a console-to-PC port. So was Mass Effect, but you weren't constantly reminded of the fact by sluggish mouse performance, an inability to map the arrow keys, and a distracting option navigation system. When it really got bad, though, was all of five minutes into the game when it became obvious that the characters were flat, the writing was stilted and unbelievable, and the story made no sense (example: there are scattered wall-cupboards throughout the game which open automatically to dispense money. Sign me up for that navy.) It really felt like an even MORE annoying version of Doom 3. (Calm down, I liked Doom 3 for about halfway through.)

Anyway, the point is, I stopped the game after an hour to see why I'd heard such good things about it, and found Meghan's review. The interesting thing isn't that she was one of VERY few reviewers who didn't like it, but rather the eight pages of vitriolic responses! They were mostly posted by dozens of readers who apparently all want their game reviews homogenized and uniform. Many of the responses are longer than the article itself, and some had to be removed by the staff. These people got MAD, many of them before they'd even played the game themselves, mostly because they felt that if OXM took a position that was out of step with other reviews, they were not to be trusted! It was like they felt betrayed. They're still posting too, having called for Meghan's dismissal as recently as two days ago.

I guess the Emperor is playing Dead Space in his New Clothes...

You can see the article and the responses here.

PS - Meghan, you're my hero. You saved me from several more hours of frustration...

Surprise! GTX 295 shipping NOW!

2009-01-08T16:13:00.000-08:00

Our distributor surprised us with immediate availability today! Will wonders never cease - the nVidia channel partners are getting much better at this. GTX 295 is now an option on the Fury and Ion. (You won't see it as an option for Video Card #3 on the Fury, so if you were hoping for Sextet SLI, keep dreaming...)

GTX 285, 295 announced + 3D glasses are back!

2009-01-08T08:19:00.000-08:00

Just in time for just missing Christmas, nVidia announced their latest and greatest on the high-end video card scene. Here's the lowdown:

GTX 285: single-45nm GPU 1GB memory 648MHz 240 cores
GTX 295: dual-45nm GPU 896MB memory 576MHz 240 cores

Compare that to the current top-end cards:

GTX 260: single-65nm GPU 896MB memory 576MHz 192 cores
GTX 280: single-65nm GPU 1GB memory 602 MHz 240 cores

Much of the hype seems to be on the dual-GPU GTX 295, but don't be surprised if the real winner turns out to be the GTX 285. Here's a few things to remember:

1. DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE!
I can't believe the vendors are once again hawking the total amount of on-board video memory on a dual-GPU card as its "available memory" or just "memory". Shame on them! The GTX 295, like any current dual-GPU nVidia card, is essentially two video cards in SLI mode, just in one physical enclosure. In SLI mode, the total amount of effective memory is the same as the lowest amount of memory available to either GPU, NOT the combined total available to both. Think of this as an 896MB card, especially if you're thinking of gaming on a 24" monitor or larger. Time will tell if the GTX 285 or the 295 is a better choice for high-res gaming, and the fact that the GTX 285 has more available memory will play a big role in that. Stay tuned, and stay skeptical ;-)

2. Availability is totally up in the air. Nobody really knows whwn these cards will hit the retail & distribution channels, but it shouldn't be more than two weeks from now. (Unless it is.)

3. Early adopters: be prepared for driver weirdness for a month or two. These aren't just tweaked versions of the current GTX-200 series; they're completely new animals, and there will almost certainly be growing pains.

Also announced today: the return of 3D glasses! It's been done before with headache-inducing results, but nVidia thinks they can provide a solid experience with stereoscopic 3D hardware. Their new 3D glasses (which we'll be adding to our offerings shortly) supposedly work with any GeForce card newer than (and including) the 8600 GT (possibly requiring a video card BIOS update) as well as with hundreds of existing games - no patch needed. See the list here. The one caveat: you need a compatable monitor. We'll be offering the Samsung 22" SyncMaster 2233RZ as soon as it is available to us, and larger monitors will probably not appear unlett the technology proves itself first.

More to come...

Core i7 Speed Targets Set

2009-01-02T10:02:00.000-08:00

Each time we start shipping PCs with a brand new generation of CPUs (like the Core i7's) we have to build enough systems to get a good feel for the overclock range of the chips before we can publish minimum overclock speeds. This happens because all CPU's are not created equal, and some roll off the Intel or AMD assembly line with a greater overclocking potential than the others.

That time has come. We'd like to thank those of you who took the plunge by ordering systems from us without knowing a minimum speed. Here is what you can expect from our Core i7 PCs:

Core i7-920: 3.5GHz
Core i7-940: 3.7GHz
Core i7-965: 3.9GHz

Again, those are minimum values, and many of our customers will receive faster chips, but this is what we can guarantee.

We did a side-by-side comparison of a 4.0GHz Core2-based PC and a 3.5GHz Core-i7, both with the same video card (4870X2) and 4GB of memory - the i7 was about 20% faster in most games. So while the Core2 Ion is still an excellent choice for the cost-conscious, you really are getting something for the extra money with the Fury.

WOW Players might want to avoid SLI...

2008-12-29T09:23:00.000-08:00

We've mentioned the lack of performance gain when using SLI in World of Warcraft before, but one of our customers has actually been crashing and/or seeing odd visual phenomenon in SLI mode, most likely due to recent nvidia driver updates. We recommend running WOW in single-card mode anyway, since it can actually run faster that way, but now you might need to do so if you're getting BSODs or weirdness.

Why the non-SLI friendly nature of WOW isn't more common knowledge is a mystery to us - it's very repeatable on multiple rigs. Maybe Blizzard has the technology to$##^^!$BLOG.SUPPRESS_WOWBOTendofline

Core i7 Overclock Speeds...

2008-12-04T15:10:00.001-08:00

We've managed to come up with some target speeds for the i7's:

i7 920 ~3.5GHz
i7 940 ~3.7GHz
i7 965 ~3.9GHz

The 965 will exceed our target more often than the others, but we don't want to promise 4GHz when we know some people will end up with less (4.0 is such a psychologically alluring number!) The chips do run a little hotter than their Core 2 counterparts, but not dramatically so. We're seeing a shortage of our preferred CPU coolers for the i7, so for a little while we'll be using whatever we can order. Mostly we've been using the Thermatake Ultima-90 with a socket 1366 bolt-through kit. The tricky thing is finding a 1366-compatable option with a backplate that weighs less than 700 grams (heavier coolers cause shipping issues.)

Don't forget that the i7 chips use a more efficient architecture than the Core 2 series (particualrly with respect to memory bandwidth) so an i7 at 3.5GHz will outperform a Q9550 at 3.5GHz by a fair margin. Perhaps we can run a side-by-side test to see just how much...

Core i7 is HERE!

2008-11-17T12:31:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: We now offer a Core i7-based model in our store - the Fury! There are many new options added, including solid state hard drives, eight new cases, and a host of gaming keyboards and mice. (Keyboards, mice, and monitors are now listed as options on the PC configuration pages, instead of being in their own categories.) Speaking of monitors, we're offering an all-new lineup of Sceptre (budget) and Samsung (premium) 22 and 24-inch models. We're still looking for a distributor to provide us with the right 30-inch model (what's being offered to us now is the Samsung 305T - a beautiful monitor, but no HDCP support.)

The Reactor and Ion products will be merged into an expanded Ion offering over the next day or two - this allows us to divide our lineup into a cost-saving Core 2-based PC and the bleeding-edge Core i7-based Fury.

Intel "Launches" Core i7 (Nehamem)...

2008-11-02T23:51:00.000-08:00

Many of you are drooling over the next big thing from Intel, and the next-gen processors are one step closer today to being in your greedy little fists.

Intel released a lot of details about the first three Core i7 CPUs today - except when you can buy them. They will be:

Core i7 920 2.66GHz, $284
Core i7 940 2.93GHz, $562
Core i7 X965 3.24GHz, $1000

Retail prices will be a tad higher. There are a lot of good changes attached to this shift, and some not so good ones. The good:

1. Direct communication between the CPU and the memory.
2. Triple-channel memory mode.
3. Many SLI/Crossfire compatible motherboards (plan on us using one)
4. Hyperthreading (8 effective processor cores from the OS's standpoint)
5. They scream.

The downside:

1. Required X58 motherboards and DDR3 memory will keep prices high for a while.
2. Linked memory will make overclocking harder.
3. Intel is busting our chops for overclocking too effectively, and may prevent significant overclocking of the less-expensive chips.
4. It's a new technology (actually several) so early adopters need to be ready for kinks.

Oh, and it's anybody's guess when this stuff will actually become available. We predict early December, but it could be the last week of November.

Here are some good links for those of you looking for more technical details:

Tweaktown
Hot Hardware
The Tech Report
Tom's Hardware

More to come...

1.5 TB drives and Core i7 - the next big thing...

2008-10-09T23:38:00.001-07:00

Man, considering the flurry of new CPU and GPU products this summer, it's been relatively quiet this fall. If it weren't for the the recent X-fi and Velociraptor appearances, I'd be wondering if the hardware manufacturers took the season off.

We have a pretty cool item to break the silence - the Reactor now offers a 1.5 TB Seagate Barracuda as an option, shipping as of now. Pretty soon, we'll just ship a copy of everything ever written with each PC. The new drive is still labeled as a 7200.11, but it is slightly faster than its siblings (like the 500 GB 7200.11 drives we use) which makes it only slightly slower than the Samsung Spinpoint 1TB drives we offer. And get ready for this - it only costs $10 more! Holy crap. Go order a reactor with four of these and rip that complete run of the Simpsons DVDs uncompressed.

On the horizon is the next big deal in Processors - the Intel Core i7. It's going to show up in November-December, so get ready for a big juicy Christmas present! (Or Kwanzaa gift, Solstice offering, etc.) Bear in mind, although it will be faster than anything in the current Core 2 lineup, it makes some major architecture changes (like an embedded memory controller) so it will take a few weeks after we get them for us (and the rest of the overclocking community) to suss out the most effective overclocking techniques. That means you early adopters out there should be prepared to see the more patient-minded end up with a higher OC. Also, although we are hearing good things about how they overclock, there's no way to predict what the actual results will be once the chips (and the completely new motherboard designs to support them) finally ship.

That said, most 3D gaming is going to see a decent performance gain, especially on 22-inch LCDs and bigger, and synthetic benchmarks are going to leap to significantly new records. As always, we will bring you the best bang for your buck. Stay tuned...

New X48 motherboard model...

2008-09-25T08:09:00.000-07:00

When the time came to embrace ATI's latest video cards, we quickly narrowed our motherboard options down to two X48 choices: the ASUS P5E Deluxe and Gigabyte's GA-X48-DS5. Both boards have excellent reputations, and we ended up choosing the ASUS board mostly because of BIOS features which we thought might make our lives easier (they perform the same, and have very similar feature sets.)

When we made the choice, however, one fact eluded us which is now prompting us to shift to the Gigabyte board. The ASUS P5E Deluxe, like so many of ASUS' high-end motherboards, places its on-board sound circuitry on a "riser card", which plugs into what appeared to be an ordinary PCI-E 1x slot. What we didn't know until recently was that this 1x PCI-E slot can ONLY be used for the riser card. This effectively removes one expansion card option from the equation as compared to other motherboards if you choose to go with a 3rd party sound card, which many of you do. As you can see from the picture below, this fact becomes a potential problem when configuring a PC with two dual-slot video cards, like the HD 4870 X2:

The problem is that the only remaining PCI-E slot is then wedged in-between the two 4870 X2's, which can overheat Creative's new X-Fi Titanium sound card. Thus, if you want a Reactor with a pair of 4870 X2's, you can't get the newer sound card. The Gigabyte X48 board doesn't have this problem:

Here we have that extra PCI-E slot available on the top, which allows for a lot more flexability, especially if you want to throw in a Killer NIC and a wireless card too. Another bonus is the addition of two more SATA ports for future expansion.

This change affects both the Reactor and the Ion, but does not change the price of either.

nVidia and ATI now both offered on the Reactor!

2008-09-18T12:57:00.000-07:00

As mentioned here previously, competition in the video card market is a good thing, and we're very happy that ATI/AMD managed to pull off a comeback. Many of us in the industry were surprised when the HD 4870 X2 took the performance crown away from nVidia after such a lackluster 18 months.

While we typically favor the performance side of "price to performance" in selecting options for our Reactor, we're a little on the fence in choosing between these two companies' high-end parts:

ATI: Slightly more bang for your buck, runs hotter and louder.
nVidia: Almost as good speed per dollar, runs quieter and cooler.

Since this has truly become a personal preference issue, we've decided to offer up both products. The Reactor now offers the following lineup of cards (each option is progressively more powerful):

1 x ATI HD 4870 512MB overclocked to 800MHz
1 x nVidia GTX 260 overclocked to 655MHz (new 216 core version)
1 x nVidia GTX 280 overclocked to 650MHz
1 x ATI HD 4870 X2 1GB overclocked to 780MHz
2 x nVidia GTX 280 overclocked to 650MHz (SLI)
2 x ATI HD 4870 X2 1GB overclocked to 780MHz (Crossfire)

Review PC for sale!

2008-09-10T07:17:00.001-07:00

If you're looking for an even better deal than we usually offer, one actually exists! The PC we sent to Gamezone for review is back and for sale at a big discount at ebay here. It's a dual-boot Ion with nVidia hardware:

Memory: 2GB Corsair DDR2-800MHz
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 overclocked to 3.2GHz
Motherboard: EVGA High-performance 680i SLI
Video Card: BFG factory-overclocked 8800 GTS 512
Hard Drive: 500GB Seagate Barracuda SATA (32MB cache)
DVD Burner: Lite-on SATA dual-layer + LightScribe
DVD-ROM: Lite-on SATA
OS #1: XP Professional 32-bit
OS #2: Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Power Supply: Thermaltake ToughPower 650-Watt
Also: Media card reader & floppy drive

You can read the review that Gamezone did on this PC here. It's covered by the same warranty as our regular PCs. Only one left!