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http://www.hardocp.com/reviews.html?cat=MjUsRGVza3 RvcCBDb21wdXRlcnMsaGNvbnN1bWVyLCws

What they are doing is having other people buying systems and then reviewing those systems. They will only review systems where they have an agreement with the manufacturer that the computer can be returned at the end of the review. The key is that the manufacturer never knows who is getting a system which may be subject to review.

It actually works well for both parties. Some manufacturers are proactive in the forums and even acted on complaints received, strengthing their processes.

From a harocp article a few months ago, the Dell XPS 400 gamers rig wont run Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Quake 4, or The Sims 2 because of conflicts with the bloatware.

After reading their out of the box experiences, and add in their additional customer support ordeal trying to remove the bloat, I think I will be staying away from dell and alienware for gaming purposes.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=OTI0LDEsLG hlbnRodXNpYXN0/

HDCP talked about on this page.

Oh, wait. Hard OCP reviewed an XPS and said that Dell's support was absolutely rotten, as usual. So much for paying a premium for Dell support.

Maybe Dell's enterprise support is good, but even "premium" consumer support is absolutely rotten.

Please note
940 is DDR Dual channel registered memory with ECC support
vs
939 is DDR Dual channel non-registered memory
Reference: http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjI2

One was designed for server/workstation requirements; registered and ECC support.

The other was designed for desktop requirements where price is and total system costs (ECC memory is significantly more expensive) are more important.

I am holding out for the Phantom Game Console!

Precedent was set by Kyle Bennett of HardOCP when he successfully defended vs Infinium Labs last year.

It is slander/libel if it's not true, even if you as another individual happen to (want to) agree with it.
Things you can say without proof? Things that are an opinion, or stated as an opinion: I think the food at McDonald's sucks. I can publish this without fear because it's my opinion. What I can't say is McDonald's uses rat poison as seasoning unless I can prove it.

disclaimer McDonalds is uummm ummmm delicious! :)

And still working at that.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=202&type=expe rt
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=OTUz
http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2006q1/radeon-x1 900/index.x?pg=1
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articl eid=777&cid=2
http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/r580/

The link in the article appears to be broken but you can get a pretty good overview on the card over at the [H]

ATI Radeon X1900 Series Evaluation

No joke. [H]ardOCP did a review recently of a Dell XPS "gaming" machine, and found that all the junkware that came pre-installed actually prevented the user from playing some of the most popular games on the market, including Sims 2. Considering that someone buying an XPS is probably not savvy enough to mess around with uninstalling all the crud that comes pre-installed, it's a gaming machine that doesn't game.

The last good AGP cards are the Nvidia 6800 series and some ATI X800 cards. You should be able to find one for around $200 (6800GS or 6800GT) that will run games just fine for another couple of years. If you need more performance though, you're pretty much stuck getting a complete new system.

Now is actually not a bad time to get a new system, especially if you go with an AMD cpu. Every component is at a "mature" point in their lifecycle and that means you're not paying for bleeding edge tech, and you have a smaller chance of getting stuck with something that doesn't quite work right. Athlon 64 cpus are fast and run relatively cool, socket 939 nforce4 motherboards are inexpensive and have a very wide range of features from bare-bones to premium boards with high quality onboard sound, dual gigabit lan, firewire, etc., pci-e video cards are available from under $100 to over $500, and SATA hard drives are fast and cheaper per gigabyte than ever before. DDR memory is readily available and cheap (2 gig of high quality PC3200 can be had for under $150), dual layer DVD burners are under $80, and both CRT and LCD displays are very affordable.

So there is no technological reason to NOT buy a complete system refresh right now. You'll always get something better/faster/cheaper if you can wait, but if you're unsatisfied with what you have NOW and there is no reasonable minor upgrade path that will satisfy your needs, then there is no non-financial reason to not do a total refresh now.

Like others have said, check out the system guides at http://www.anandtech.com/. http://www.hardocp.com/ also has hardware reviews from a gaming perspective. An Athlon 64 3700+ matched to an ASUS A8N Deluxe, with an Nvidia 7800GT and 2x1 gig sticks of PC3200 memory would make the foundation for a very nice multi-purpose computer that would also be a great gaming machine. You should be able to part together a very nice rig for under $1200, using very fast but completely mature components.

After extensive testing we have found these PC's aren't able to run numerous popular games. The games that this machine runs, does so at a much lower frame rate then expected.

Unless Dell changes their software policy and stops shipping new systems with so much crap @ startup it won't matter how good the hardware is. To get decent performance from one of Dell's recent gaming machines one has to spend over an hour uninstalling crap and disabling random services @ startup.

The following is a hardocp review of the Dell Dimensions XPS 400. Covers the buying process, Dell's support, along with the hardware and software it ships with. The system's hardware potential was great, too bad you had to make an extensive software cleanup make this perform respectibly.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=OTI0

Noticed on Penny Arcade that HardOCP is doing this for real.

And yes, it does void your warranty.

Hardocp.com posted an article on a watercooling mod job for 360, and unlike this worthless article, it actually describes how they do it: http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=OTM5

They say at the end it had a huge affect on temperature, dropping the temperature 50 degrees fahrenheit.

According to one review (midpage and lower), Dell doesn't like the idea of home users going out and blowing away Dell's custom MBR. According to the reps, using a different MBR voids the warranty support and you'd have to pay for their on-call service.

I don't think they're very keen to users installing Linux.

Normally, we have arrangements with computer manufacturers marketing departments that allow us to purchase systems they offer anonymously, and then RMA the computers after the review is written and published. Currently, we do not have a similar agreement in place with Dell. Nevertheless, we felt it was important to take a look at what the largest manufacturer in North America offers during the holiday season when many people decide what gifts to get their family and friends, so we purchased this computer from Dell.

Aside from the curiosity that they have someone listed as a "Grammatical (sic) and Spelling Editor -- whose duties evidently do not extend to punctuation (should be: manufacturers'), this passage translates as: "normally, we only review stuff we can get for free -- we paid for this one." I don't have a problem with the practice of reviewing Hardware from the retail perspective: indeed, for similar reasons and about the same time, Tom's Hardware has taken the same step. What's worrisome is the curious mix of the "Consumer Reports" style with an allusion to a failed negotiation with Dell's Marketing Department. Well, okay, maybe not an allusion: it is conceivable that nobody at [H]ard OCP tried to contact "the largest manufacturer in North America" for a "review copy" deal. It is conceivable, but not likely.

So at the start of the review, the editors tell us that Dell "won't play ball", and they probably spent around $3000 in taxes and restocking fees. The review that follows, of course, will not reflect these facts.

And the review that follows is a beauty: tearing into Dell for all those awful bundling practices they negotiate with third parties to bring the price down further, for not including a recovery diskette, then charging $11 for an OS CD, and having crappy customer support. Oh yeah, the system is unstable as Hell because, after running their "torture test" on the original setup -- with all the crap running., it crashed at the 24 hour mark. system restore.

Then, at the end of the article, the editor steps in with the reason for all this:

Another Point of View

Editor's Note: The Dell XPS 400 stands in stark contrast to the other large, international OEM we have dealt with: Gateway.

The Gateway FX400XL, like the XPS 400, is a system from a large and highly publicized OEM of personal computers, and it is aimed squarely at gamers and enthusiasts. However, unlike the Gateway FX400XL, our Dell XPS 400 was crippled with debilitating bloatware that severely impacted our enjoyment of the system. The Gateway FX400XL had some value added software that treaded near or in the realm of bloatware, but it certainly didn't stop us from installing games or enjoy playing them.

For those of you that missed it, the Review in question evaluates a system a couple notches up in the performance category (but, one assumes, since Gateway's marketing dept. played ball, the journalistic budget didn't factor in). But even hardware differences aside, methodologically the two cases aren't comparable. As far as bloatware goes, the Gateway shipped not only with McAfee's antivirus (which the Dell review repeatedly cites as a nuisance and a cause of instability), but also Norton and BigFix. The drivers were not 3 months out of date like at Dell, but 8 months (to which the reviewer says: "Big deal? Not really" and proudly states he installed the latest driver immediately -- instead of, like the Dell review, going to try out games he knew wouldn't work). The Gateway had tons of toolbars and installed bloat. What did the reviewer do?:

First Boot: First Shutdown I took the liberty of going into msconfig and looked at the startup list. Obviously, there's a lot of programs

The good folks at [H]ardocp.com just sent Child's Play a $20,000 check from a recent computer raffle. $10 was mine I hope I win the computer :-) http://www.hardocp.com/

Here is the link to the photo comparison: http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODk3

Scroll to the bottom and you'll see the fact that they are about an inch or two different. Not including the external brick, making the 360 BIGGER. Heh, did they really think the color white would throw the Japanese?

Oh, really? Lies, eh? here is a side by side with both systems: http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODk3 Yep. exact same size... oh, and don't forget the 360 still has the large power brick in addition... so it is actually larger. PWND.

I kinda feel bad for mentioning this, considering the context,
but I just saw this really funny picture over on [H]ardOCP

For the Horde!!!

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=182&type=expe rt
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODg1
http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2005q4/geforce-7 800gtx-512/index.x?pg=1
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2607
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articl eid=751&cid=2
http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/285/

What, you were asleep when Valve's Gabe Newell announced that the Nvidia FX series had HUGE performance deficit while running in DX9 mode? The performance hit wass blamed on the number of available registers dropping by half in DX9 mode.

The performance hit was incredible at the time. After the botched release of the FX 5800 Ultra, the rest of the FX series had turned out to be competitive in DX8 / DX8.1 games currently availavble, so this was quite a surprise. [H]ardOCP summed up Valve's report on the following pages:

Performance in pure DX9 mode.

Nvidia FX-optimized "mixed mode" performance versus pure DX9.

The key quote:

The good news is Nvidia got faster [with the mixed-mode DX8/DX9 optimizations]. Bad news is that performance gains go away in the future as new DX9 functionality will be able to use fewer and fewer partial-precision functions.

I think that sums it up nicely. Battlefield 2 is a 100% DX9 game (hence the reason the GF4 and GF3 are not supported), and it performs like crap on the FX series.

The worst part is, the lack of registers seems to limit only the maximum performance of the faster FX-series cards. So, while DX9 mode only slows down the FX 5200 and 5600 slightly, the 5900 series is severly hampered.

What, you were asleep when Valve's Gabe Newell announced that the Nvidia FX series had HUGE performance deficit while running in DX9 mode? The performance hit wass blamed on the number of available registers dropping by half in DX9 mode.

The performance hit was incredible at the time. After the botched release of the FX 5800 Ultra, the rest of the FX series had turned out to be competitive in DX8 / DX8.1 games currently availavble, so this was quite a surprise. [H]ardOCP summed up Valve's report on the following pages:

Performance in pure DX9 mode.

Nvidia FX-optimized "mixed mode" performance versus pure DX9.

The key quote:

The good news is Nvidia got faster [with the mixed-mode DX8/DX9 optimizations]. Bad news is that performance gains go away in the future as new DX9 functionality will be able to use fewer and fewer partial-precision functions.

I think that sums it up nicely. Battlefield 2 is a 100% DX9 game (hence the reason the GF4 and GF3 are not supported), and it performs like crap on the FX series.

The worst part is, the lack of registers seems to limit only the maximum performance of the faster FX-series cards. So, while DX9 mode only slows down the FX 5200 and 5600 slightly, the 5900 series is severly hampered.

That'll do them no good until they get a Phantom Game Console to run it on.

Listed alphabetically.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2593
http://www.avault.com/hardware/getreview.asp?revie w=evga6800gs
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hardware/grafik karten/2005/test_nvidia_geforce_6800_gs/
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/X16_GS/index.h tm
http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/278/
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODgy
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articl eid=747&cid=2
http://www.noticias3d.com/articulo.asp?idarticulo= 541
http://www.nvnews.net/previews/geforce_6800_gs/ind ex.shtml
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q4/geforce-6800g s/index.x?pg=1

There are lots of other reviews out there, too. Looks like the 6800GS kicks the X1600 where it hurts. Over and over and over again.

- [H]ard|OCP
- Avault
- Computer Base
- Driver Heaven
- Guru3D
- Hartware
- HotHardware
- Noticia3D
- nV News
- The Tech Report

I shamelessly stole this list from Hardocp.com

Review of GeForce 6800 GS and ATI Radeon X1600 XT

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODgy

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2593 http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODgy Looks like the 6800 GT and the Ultra are going to be abandoned...

ok, i'll admit it: i bought an atari lynx and a jaguar when they came out. i root for the underdog, almost to the point of throwing away money on inferior stuff. (i still play the lynx sometimes... i know, i know...) i am always looking for that hidden gem of a game or some advanced feature the other guys hadn't thought about just to expand my horizons. however, those early hard-ocp articles http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTEy/ really drove home the point that i and the rest of the gaming world should stay very far away from this company and their product. this is just more icing on the cake. add to that they probably won't ship the phantom until after the PS3 and revolution come out, and there is no reason to even consider their console. at least their trainwreck story will live on long after the hardware/gaming service is forgotten.

Not to nitpick, but the settings I mentioned aren't "amazingly pretty." My point is precisely that while Doom3 runs better than you'd expect on budget hardware, another modern game *is* borderline unplayable. Even at minimum resolution / quality. It's worth pointing out to potential buyers. If you've had a better experience with Quake, I'm interested to hear it.

I'm on a rig like that right now, and it runs Doom 3 at 1024x768 with specular lighting at around 30fps

If you can't milk more than 30 fps out of Doom3 on that card, I don't think you're in a position to suggest video settings. Tweaks for further improvement are documented out the wazoo.

obviously you missed the fact that when gaming at 1600x1200 and are using 4x antialiasing and 8x anisotropic filtering that the x1800xt beats the shit out of the gf7800.

if you're buying a 500 dollar card, are you seriously worried about benchmarks that are run without aa+af? this card even does HDR (hi dynamic range) plus AA, something that the gf7800 can't.

this card is way more sophisticated and highly refined that the brute force 7800. the 7800 isn't bad but that this card can do with 16 pipelines what the 7800 can't do with 24, says a lot.

and that's just raw performance with todays games. never mind the fact that the 1800xt comes with 512megs of super fast ram... ready for well into the next generation of games, whereas 256meg 7800's are already obsolete for the high end of the next generation. sure 256 will be enough if you pare down the resolution and lower the texture detail. one example is the game F.E.A.R... on the 1800xt it absolutely trounces the 7800 in performance.

my advice... read ALL the reviews you can get your hands on. there are too many discrepencies if you only read one or two. if you want to get a more full picture, get to reading.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2552

http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/r520/

http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/r520reviewxvxv /

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1867116 ,00.asp

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_radeon_x18 00_xt_xl/

http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/262/

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODIy

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=3603

http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?article id=734&cid=2

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews /ati_radeon_x1800_x1600preview

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=172

http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?id=407

http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/8864

and check out the wicked new 3d tech demos... both are very impressive but the toystore demo is jawdropping.

http://www.ati.com/designpartners/media/edudemos/R adeonX1k.html

wmv9 hi def format but plays fine in mplayer or VLC.

Listed alphabetically so no preference to which site is good or not.

http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/r520/
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/r520reviewxvxv /
http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/262/
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODIy
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=3603
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews /ati_radeon_x1800_x1600preview
http://www.noticias3d.com/articulo.asp?idarticulo= 527
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=172
http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?id=407
http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/8864

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=172

http://www.techreport.com/

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODIy

http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/r520/

NVidia currently has a couple SLI cards, which perform quite well. I recently picked up a 7800 GT, the low-end of the high-end cards, for around $350. The plan is to pick up a second one when the price drops to around $100. It's very reminiscent of my Voodoo 2 experience - the first cost $300 and the second cost $30.

Of course, Crossfire has the benefit of working with any other ATI card past a certain point. With NVidia's offerings, you have to match the card exactly (though supposedly the manufacturer doesn't matter). For my needs, it doesn't matter all that much, but it's something to consider.

Not that I'm a fanboy of either vendor. My last card was a Radeon 9800 Pro, which has worked great these last couple years. Now it seems that NVidia has the card that works best for my needs. Ain't competition grand?

http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/crossfire/
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/09/26/ati_cr ossfire_detail/1.html
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/crossfireatire viewxxx/
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODE1
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?article id=730&cid=2
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=168
http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?id=404
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q3/ati-crossfire /index.x?pg=1
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20050926/ index.html

The 64-bit version of Far Cry was intended to give increased detail while still delivering similar performance to the 32-bit version.

There are more objects on maps, increased geometric complexity, improved effects, and the view distance has been increased. These are all typically CPU-limited performance barriers. See the [H]ardOCP review to get a feel for what 64-bit brings to the party. It's not an AMAZING improvement, but it is significant.

here's the review: http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQ3LDE=

They forgot both Broadband Investment Group Corporation (BIG) and the Intira Corproation. =( Some info here.

Actually, they already are considering it. The 7800GTX has 50% more transistors than the 6800 Ultra, but runs cooler.

Basically they're shutting off portions of the chip when not in use to cut down on power consumption.

This is mentioned briefly at http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/07/07/g70_clock_ speed/
and also at http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzg0LDI=

Yep Pelters create tons of heat, and need an external power supply to work, which is why they aren't touched much. Been hearing about them more recently though.

Reminds me of the Matrix bastardization on detonate.net.

"How can you void my warranty just because I know who Kyle Bennett is?"

-Tim

HardOCP tested this against a dual core 4800+ and some other A64's. The FX-57 is still fastest in single-threaded tasks like games. The X2 is looking better to me though. As fast as the A64 4000+ in single CPU tasks plus the huge edge in multitasking.

http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzg3

wow, guys. welcome to 2003.

From http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzg0LDIw

One thing you will also notice is that, in many cases, a single GeForce 7800 GTX is matching or beating the performance and image quality of two GeForce 6800 Ultras in SLI.

sometimes ignorance is based on..well..ignorance.
[H]ardOCP investigation of Infinium Labs

Back in 2002, [H]ardOCP did a project called "The Rotten Apple".
Its far more creative and looks a hell of a lot nicer.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzUx

Mac G3 to PC mods are (were) fairly common, due to the overall niceness of the G3 case.
Note that this isn't really a conversion so much as it is a "gutting and stuffing".

Of course, I've never thought case-mods were newsworthy.
The only probable reason this made it to the front page is to exploit the apple switch buzz.

Boo timothy.

I remember they did this in 2002 and called it the rotten apple. http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzUx

I also think what they did with the colors was a lot more interesting than this mod.

HardOCP (http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzc4) also has a decent preview. If you look down the list of the various news items for today, the [H] has included links to other previews. Also, they have some photographs from CompuTex (???) in Taipei from this week.

I skimmed both the Anandtech and HardOCP articles, and the basic gist about ATI's "SLI" is:

- needs an ATI chipset (the 200 -- for both Intel and AMD right now)
- "SLI" connector is external via some sort of weird DVI dongle
- uses one (1) existing X800 or X850 flavor card + a special CrossFire edition of same card models = no real need to get TWO CrossFire cards at one time if you already have the above models

Looks like I'm gonna need a monster case to ever be able to do this setup (ATI's demos at CompuTex take up 4 friggin' slots on the back of a case).

IronChefMorimoto

Don't be so sure about that. The HardOCP article about the GPU (here) indicates that there are 192 separate FPUs built into the GPU's "Smart 3D Memory" subsystem. If nothing else, weird new features like that make it relatively pointless to "predict" relative capabilities of the consoles prior to release.