HP Blackbird 002: Back in Black
by Jarred Walton on September 12, 2007 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Benchmark Setup
Because of a shipping snafu, we have only had the Blackbird 002 in our possession for less than a week. During that time we have been running benchmarks almost constantly, and when we weren't benchmarking the system we were running stress tests in order to push the setup to its limits. Stress testing was provided courtesy of Folding@Home SMP as well as various games. Since Friday, we have experienced exactly one crash, potentially related to Folding@Home. However, that occurred during the night and the system hard locked, plus we have been unable to duplicate the crash. We can't say that the system is 100% stable, but considering we're testing in a non-air-conditioned environment that has ranged from around 21°C at night up to as high as 33°C during the day, and adding in the fact that we have been pushing the system to its limits, we're okay with stating that this is about as stable as any other top-end system running Windows Vista.
We haven't done any recent desktop reviews, and the benchmarking landscape has changed quite a bit in the past few months making most of our old results useless in terms of direct comparisons. We also haven't tested any other systems anywhere near this fast, other than a Dell XPS 720 H2C that we had to send back due to some issues we encountered with the early prototype. Basically, we had one of the first 720 H2C systems to come off the production line, and it was overclocked to 3.73 GHz. Unfortunately, we encountered instability with the test system and so the only benchmarks we were able to complete were done at a reduced 3.47 GHz.
We're going to go ahead and include the 720 H2C results at 3.47 GHz for comparison where applicable, because that system has a lot of similarities to the HP Blackbird 002. Both are water cooled, both weigh about 70 pounds, both are factory overclocked, and both cost a small fortune. The XPS 720 H2C that we tested included dual Raptor hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration, 4GB of DDR2-800 memory, and GeForce 8800 Ultra SLI for the graphics subsystem, all in a Dell specific 680i motherboard. We would assume that Dell has since addressed any stability concerns, and we may yet provide a review of the XPS 720 H2C, but for many of the benchmarks we're going to be limited by the GPU configuration anyway which will make this comparison all the more interesting. Because the XPS was tested two months back with what are now outdated drivers, and because we have changed versions and benchmarks, preliminary results from the XPS 720 H2C will only be available in about half of the gaming tests.
Of course, testing the Blackbird 002 wasn't without issues either. Besides the crash that we experienced (note that the XPS 720 H2C we had would BSOD within minutes of starting up Folding@Home SMP), we were completely unable to get any of the Futuremark test suites to run. With the limited amount of time that we've had we decided to simply skip those results. Update: The issue with Futuremark is related to the hardware detection mechanism and ATI 2x00 series cards. We will have Futuremark results in our follow-up article. The results in F.E.A.R. were also all over the map, for example scoring 167 FPS one run and 23 FPS a second run - all at the same settings, run consecutively, without restarting. Again, this appears to be a driver/ATI problem, and we will look into this more over the next week. Once we're finished with this initial look at the Blackbird, we will also see about doing a clean install of Windows Vista in order to run additional benchmarks like SYSmark 2007.
Besides the stock performance of the Blackbird 002, we thought we'd go ahead and take a second look at the system performance with a "lesser CPU". We decided to underclock the QX6850 from the 3.67 overclock, but since we're still talking about an $1100+ processor we didn't think it would be particularly useful to look at a stock QX6850. Instead, we dropped the multiplier all the way down to seven, resulting in a hypothetical Q6650 (Core 2 Quad 2.33GHz 7x333 1333FSB). We tried to configure the CPU as an actual Q6600, but the motherboard refused to POST at an FSB setting below 1166. For whatever reason, the current BIOS doesn't like running 1333FSB processors at lower bus speeds. The primary goal here is to show exactly what users get by upgrading from the cheapest Core 2 Quad processor to the highly overclocked version that comes in the top-end model of the Blackbird.
We'll start with a few general performance applications from our multimedia benchmarking suite, but the focus is going to be on gaming performance. Simply put, if you don't care about gaming performance, we find it hard to believe that anyone would seriously consider spending over $1200 on their graphics subsystem. Sure, certain 3D graphics professionals have OpenGL cards that can cost twice as much for a single card, but that's an entirely different market. If all you need is a factory overclocked quad-core CPU, you might be able to get the Blackbird without all the extra graphics hardware, but we will have to wait a few more days before we know the answer to that question.
Because of a shipping snafu, we have only had the Blackbird 002 in our possession for less than a week. During that time we have been running benchmarks almost constantly, and when we weren't benchmarking the system we were running stress tests in order to push the setup to its limits. Stress testing was provided courtesy of Folding@Home SMP as well as various games. Since Friday, we have experienced exactly one crash, potentially related to Folding@Home. However, that occurred during the night and the system hard locked, plus we have been unable to duplicate the crash. We can't say that the system is 100% stable, but considering we're testing in a non-air-conditioned environment that has ranged from around 21°C at night up to as high as 33°C during the day, and adding in the fact that we have been pushing the system to its limits, we're okay with stating that this is about as stable as any other top-end system running Windows Vista.
We haven't done any recent desktop reviews, and the benchmarking landscape has changed quite a bit in the past few months making most of our old results useless in terms of direct comparisons. We also haven't tested any other systems anywhere near this fast, other than a Dell XPS 720 H2C that we had to send back due to some issues we encountered with the early prototype. Basically, we had one of the first 720 H2C systems to come off the production line, and it was overclocked to 3.73 GHz. Unfortunately, we encountered instability with the test system and so the only benchmarks we were able to complete were done at a reduced 3.47 GHz.
We're going to go ahead and include the 720 H2C results at 3.47 GHz for comparison where applicable, because that system has a lot of similarities to the HP Blackbird 002. Both are water cooled, both weigh about 70 pounds, both are factory overclocked, and both cost a small fortune. The XPS 720 H2C that we tested included dual Raptor hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration, 4GB of DDR2-800 memory, and GeForce 8800 Ultra SLI for the graphics subsystem, all in a Dell specific 680i motherboard. We would assume that Dell has since addressed any stability concerns, and we may yet provide a review of the XPS 720 H2C, but for many of the benchmarks we're going to be limited by the GPU configuration anyway which will make this comparison all the more interesting. Because the XPS was tested two months back with what are now outdated drivers, and because we have changed versions and benchmarks, preliminary results from the XPS 720 H2C will only be available in about half of the gaming tests.
Of course, testing the Blackbird 002 wasn't without issues either. Besides the crash that we experienced (note that the XPS 720 H2C we had would BSOD within minutes of starting up Folding@Home SMP), we were completely unable to get any of the Futuremark test suites to run. With the limited amount of time that we've had we decided to simply skip those results. Update: The issue with Futuremark is related to the hardware detection mechanism and ATI 2x00 series cards. We will have Futuremark results in our follow-up article. The results in F.E.A.R. were also all over the map, for example scoring 167 FPS one run and 23 FPS a second run - all at the same settings, run consecutively, without restarting. Again, this appears to be a driver/ATI problem, and we will look into this more over the next week. Once we're finished with this initial look at the Blackbird, we will also see about doing a clean install of Windows Vista in order to run additional benchmarks like SYSmark 2007.
Besides the stock performance of the Blackbird 002, we thought we'd go ahead and take a second look at the system performance with a "lesser CPU". We decided to underclock the QX6850 from the 3.67 overclock, but since we're still talking about an $1100+ processor we didn't think it would be particularly useful to look at a stock QX6850. Instead, we dropped the multiplier all the way down to seven, resulting in a hypothetical Q6650 (Core 2 Quad 2.33GHz 7x333 1333FSB). We tried to configure the CPU as an actual Q6600, but the motherboard refused to POST at an FSB setting below 1166. For whatever reason, the current BIOS doesn't like running 1333FSB processors at lower bus speeds. The primary goal here is to show exactly what users get by upgrading from the cheapest Core 2 Quad processor to the highly overclocked version that comes in the top-end model of the Blackbird.
We'll start with a few general performance applications from our multimedia benchmarking suite, but the focus is going to be on gaming performance. Simply put, if you don't care about gaming performance, we find it hard to believe that anyone would seriously consider spending over $1200 on their graphics subsystem. Sure, certain 3D graphics professionals have OpenGL cards that can cost twice as much for a single card, but that's an entirely different market. If all you need is a factory overclocked quad-core CPU, you might be able to get the Blackbird without all the extra graphics hardware, but we will have to wait a few more days before we know the answer to that question.
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - link
You have to do a bit more accurate math on the cost. Yes, it's still expensive, but it's not at all a 2-3X mark up.Crazy ATX Case: I'd say this is easily a $500 case. Not that most people need it, but this is not some flimsy plastic thing.
1100W PSU: It looks like this might be a TOPOWER 1100W PSU (it says "TOP-1100W DVT" on a sticker). The 1000W TOPOWER at Newegg costs $330 shipped, so call this on $350.
QX6850: $1200, not overclocked
ASUS Striker: $300
2 x 1GB 2900 XT: $1000
2x1GB Corsair Dominator 8500: $210
160GB Raptor: $190 (technically 10GB more than the normal 150GB Raptors)
750GB Seagate: $210
Logitech G11: $55
Logitech G5: $60
Asetek cooling: $400 for this particular kit seems likely
Blu-ray/HD drive: $880 (Yup, look up the GGW-H10NI - crazy!)
DVDR slot load: $40
Total for parts alone: $4200, and that's going by cheapest online prices.
Still expensive, still a ~50% markup, but then the factory overclock with warranty is worth at least something, right? Anyway, I'm not saying it's a great deal, but if someone told me they wanted me to build them a system like this? Yeah, I'd probably charge at least $1000 to do it, just because I'd want to have some extra for the invariable support costs. "My OC'ed computer just crashed...."
jonnyGURU - Friday, September 14, 2007 - link
Actually, the Blackbird's 1100W is based on Topower's 1200W platform. Tweak and guideline requests (OCP settings, efficiency at different loads, etc.) from HP put the continuous output rating at 1100W. So that's another $50 we need to add for the PSU. FWIW, it's based on the same unit as the ABS/Tagan 1300W (looser standards than HP) which sells for $400.yyrkoon - Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - link
OF al lthe OEM system manufactuers HP probably has one of the better warranties, or so I have been told. Since I do not personally OWN a HP machine, I have to go by word of mouth here. Anyhow, I would venture to say that the warranty on these blackbird system would probably have to be close to Dells Gold service plan.What does this mean ? It means you do not have to play the idiot on the phone for some E. India 'technitian' who probably has less of a clue what is wrong with your system than you do, but rather get to deal with stateside technitians who can actually be helpfull . . . It also means you do not have to wait for some lowly tech to wade through the 'chain of command' to get things replaced/fixed.
Slaimus - Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - link
Is it true that for this system HP somehow got CF to work on a SLI motherboard? If so, does it need special modded drivers like the ULi "GLI" motherboards?wolfman3k5 - Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - link
I doubt that, I will do some research on that and post back. Raul Sood said that they didn't do it with NVidia's help, so if anything was moded, it must be special Catalyst drivers that are being made available only to HP. Sooner or later the "secret" will come out. But I don't imagine that it's something that difficult to do, since ATI uses two CF bridges, and they transfer all rendering data over those, hence, they don't have to rely on the chipset.RamarC - Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - link
but the blackbird line is shipping with at least two motherboard options since there's an amd x2 based blackbird. so two additional mobos could be available for cf/sli.JarredWalton - Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - link
No need to do any research:"ATI CrossFire requires peer-to-peer writes in order to function, and ATI has always maintained that support for this feature is the only thing preventing CrossFire from working on other chipsets, like NVIDIA's SLI chipsets."
If the BIOS is updates so that peer-to-peer PCI-E writes work, CrossFire should work. SLI of course is a given, and getting SLI on non-NVIDIA chipsets is what usually requires hacked drivers. I'll let you know if the stock 7.9 drivers work properly later today when I've had a chance to verify.
n7 - Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - link
I was excited to see this review, mainly because i wanted to see how well their cooling system worked.But there's not a word in this review about the cooling setup, what temps were, was it better than others for OCing etc...
And as for the system itself, sure, it looks nice, & getting SLI or CF working is nice, but 2 GB of RAM?
That's just a big joke when many of us already run 4 GB in our "lowly systems"...
JarredWalton - Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - link
For a 32-bit OS, there's not much need to go beyond 2GB of RAM. Users will almost certainly get the option to install 4GB in the online configurator - and they might even be able to select a 64-bit OS; I don't know yet because the system isn't officially on sale for a few more days.As for the water cooling setup, I haven't tested any other water cooling configs so I can't say whether the Asetek unit in the Blackbird is better or not. It appears to deal with a fully stressed Core 2 Quad @ 3.66 GHz, though I can't be 100% sure that the overclock didn't cause a crash or two. I can look into temperatures for the follow-up, but honestly I think stability is far more important. If a system can manage to run Folding@Home SMP without excessive failures and/or crashes, that's usually a pretty good indication that the overclock is "safe".
wolfman3k5 - Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - link
HP should have known better than installing a 32 bit OS on such a system, because the OS will never be able to address all the video memory. It's about the same as installing 4GB Ram on a 32 bit OS, except that in this situation with 2GB system RAM and 2GB Video Ram, the OS will be able to address closer to 4GB Ram. Other devices also take away some of the 4GB addressing space.As far as CrossFire is concerned, it's not so miraculous that it works on a Striker Motherboard. After all, native crossfire will transfer all data over the two bridges, so it can be chipset agnostic.
It looks like the high performance PC market is pretty profitable, and HP and other companies are going after the boutique manufacturers to try and take away what business is left. But if I want this kind of computer, I'd rather buy from Falcon NW, Puget or build my own. Sorry, not my cup of tea.