5 replies to this topic

[Novahawk]

Review of a Falcon Northwest Mach V from PCGamer:
"The early bird gets the worm. A falcon is a bird. And according to eyewitness reports, Kelt Reeves, CEO of Falcon Northwest, gets up early. Well now we know how Falcon Northwest got hold of not one, but two of ATI's long-anticipated DirectX 10-compatible Radeon HD 2900 XT video cards (which had been codenamed R600) before I got my own boards for benchmarking from the folks up in Canada.

Now, these aren't the HD 2900 XTs that you've been clipping coupons for since last spring when the Internet was abuzz with speculation about the R600's performance. No, the HD 2900 XTX is a model that will be made available to system builders, and once you take a look at it, you can guess why. This thing is huge-at 12 inches in length (and I'm not talking Craigslist inches), it's not going to fit in every case, and it requires a hell of a lot of power to operate (over 200 watts at peak. These "OEM" cards (which you might see referred to as HD 2900 XTXs, although this is not how ATI refers to them) are outfitted with a special cooling unit and 1GB of extremely high-speed DDR4 RAM (as opposed to 512MB of DDR3 memory on the standard HD 2900 XT).

Naturally, Falcon paired up these over-the-top-of-the-line cards with Intel's quad-core QX6800 Extreme, overclocked to 3.6GHz on Intel's D975XBX2 motherboard (topped off with a Sanyo-Denke water-cooler) and 2GB of Corsair DDR2 RAM, and powered it all with a Silverstone 850W modular power supply. Storage is limited to twin 150GB Western Digital Raptors, which is beginning to feel a little cramped these days ("perpendicular" recording technology, for instance, has already resulted in one terabyte drives for consumers). The case came with one of Falcon's gorgeous and absolutely flawless signature custom jobs, and at my request, Falcon pre-configured the system to dual boot Windows XP and Windows Vista.

The first round of benchmarks were performed on Windows XP, and the news was a bit of a surprise coming from a Falcon Northwest system. Although the Mach V scored an impressive 17,266 3DMarks, this is a hair behind the similarly configured Velocity Micro Gamer's Edge PCX (recieved a 91% in June 2007), which, with the help of its dual 8800 GTXs, scored 17,316 in a rig that cost over $2000 less (or $1000 without Falcon's top-notchpaint job). Other bechmarks fell similarly behind, as well (see the benchmarks chart below).

In Vista, however, the story was much more impressive, Vista adds a bit of drag to the overall benchmark scores, but when it comes to dual-GPU rigs and Vista, Nvidia's drivers tank. Swapping in dual 8800 GTXs in SLI config netted less than 13,500 3DMarks- this is not the way it's meant to be played. With dual HD 200 XTs under Crossfire, however ATI and Falcon look mighty good at 16, 568 3DMarks.

Here's the upshot: For the time being, HD 2900 XTs in Crossfire are the way to go fro Vista users (or anyone buying a new system with Vista installed). Of course, this may change as drivers improve, but isn't that always the case?

So, if Falcon has delivered another winner (and caught the prize for being first at the gate), why did it just barely win an Editor's Choice with a score of 90%? Because it's crazy expensive, heats up a small room to bikini and Speedo temperatures, is somewhat tight on the storage, and, while quiet for a performance machine, could be a little easier on the ears. It's also time for manufacturers of extremely high-priced rigs to consider dropping the supplementary DVD-ROM and adding a high-capacity recordable optical drive instead (either Blu-ray or HD-DVD), so that gamers can watch, oh, say, The Thing on their off hours."

Falcon Northwest Mach V - $7,245
Chassis: Falcon Northwest Icon
Paint: Exotic - Red Rain
PSU: Silverstone ST85F 850W Modular
Motherboard: Intel D975XBX2 Socket 775
CPU: Intel QX6800 Quad Core Extreme (at 3.6Ghz)
Cooling: Sanyo-Denke Water Cooler; Quiet Fan Kit
Memory: Corsair Twin2X2048-6400C4 - 2GB Total with EPP
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 12-inch 1GB x 2 (Crossfire)
Storage: WD 150GB Raptor 10000RPM x 2, 300GB Total; Mitsumi 7 in 1 Media Card Reader w/Floppy
Optical Drives: Sony 16x DVD-Rom (Black); Lite-On 20X DVD+-RW DL w/Lightscribe
OS: Windows XP PRO; Windows Vista Home Premium

Velocity Micro Gamer's Edge PCX - $5,150
CPU: Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad QX6800 (oc'd to 3.7GHz)
Cooling: Velocity Micro LiquiCool 3 thermal electric cooling
Motherboard: cVGA nForce 680i SLI
Memory: 2GB DDR2
Video Card: Dual 768MB nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX's in SLI config
Sound Card: Sound Blaster X-FI XtremeGamer
Storage: 700 GB (2x 10000RPM WD 150GB RAID 0; 7200RPM WD 400GB)
Optical Drives: Dual Lite-On 20x/16x Dual Layer CD/DVD burners (w/Lightscribe)
PSU: 1200W PC Power and Cooling
OS: Windows XP (with Vista Home Premium Upgrade)

Benchmarks:
Falcon Northwest Mach V: |3DMark 06: (3DMarks): 17,266 (CPU): 5,336| |Doom 3: (1600x1200): 192.5fps| |F.E.A.R.: (1600x1200): 111fps| |HL2:Episode 1: (1600x1200): 203fps|
Velocity Micro Gamer's Edge PCX: |3DMark 06: (3DMarks): 17,316 (CPU): 5,846| |Doom 3: (1600x1200): 192.5fps| |F.E.A.R.: (1600x1200): 153fps| |HL2:Episode 1: (1600x1200): 203fps|





Yeah so, ATI screwed everyone who builds their own pcs. To get the awesome 2900 XT you have to buy a prebuilt $7000 system? whats up with that?

[Billy Pumper]

i did read your last sentence though and that sounds like it sucks

[Moses]

hmm....

[Novahawk]

BTW, I typed all of that straight from the mag, so if there are any spelling errors, that's my fault.. oops

[DarkShadow]

probably the first few cards that got built went directly to that company, which would explain it, similar to how nvidia's highends went right to Alienware and the like.

[Mandraque]

theyll be available sooner or later.