Late last week, a rumor broke that HP might be giving its gamer enthusiast brand, Voodoo, the boot. Turns out, that wasn’t entirely true as it sounds like Voodoo is going to be brought in under the HP umbrella similarly like Compaq. In fact, this was first announced a few months ago, proving that the Internet rumor mill is a crazy, crazy bastard. → Read More
If you’re in the market for a new gaming computer, then take a look at the new quad-core Omen from VoodooPC. The Omen features Intel’s new quad-core Core 2 Duo Extreme processors, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 80GB hard drive and a Creative Labs X-Fi Xtreme Music sound card. The Omen is fully upgradeable, but with its $5,500, you may want to add the additional hardware yourself. VoodooPC uses an intercooler and an “advanced chamber airflow layout” to keep the PC cool and quiet. Though VoodooPC says the Omen is a near-silent system, I’d have to try it out for myself before I believed that. Even though high-end gamings PCs have liquid cooling, they still have normal fans you can hear. As for video cards, you can pick between ATI Radeons and Nvidia GeForces. If you want to go for the gold, you might want to put in two GeForce 7950s making for a quad-core CPU and a quad-SLI setup. VoodooPC Announces Quad-Core Gaming Rig [slashgear] → Read More
With HP buying VoodooPC last week and Dell purchasing Alienware earlier this year, there’s been more than a few comments around the Web on how these mainstream vendors will impact the quality of the boutiques. The fact is, many companies have high-end, mainstream and value brands, so why should computer vendors be any different? HP and Dell deserve some credit for realizing that just because they know how to build a performance desktop, doesn’t mean they can provide everything gamers want, which includes a brandname that’s not synonymous with the mainstream. But, to illustrate just what the differences are between a large, mainstream-vendor gaming box and a boutique machine, ExtremeTech did a little head-to-head testing on a $3,745 Gateway FX510XT and a Falcon Northwest Mach V priced at $7,295. The focus was on widescreen gaming using tests of Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, Call of Duty 2, Company of Heroes, Doom 3, F.E.A.R. and Prey. The results were slightly surprising, with the Gateway running pretty close in performance on most graphics tests, despite the Falcon’s quad-SLI setup to the Gateway’s CrossFire array; processor performance went to the Mach V with a faster, overclocked CPU. While ExtremeTech cited several other reasons the Mach V tops the FX510XT, in the end it said Gateway built a solid mainstream gaming system. Falcon’s desktop, though, comes with bragging rights. The Falcon and the Bull: A Wide Screen Shootout [ExtremeTech] → Read More
