HP Blackbird 002: Back in Black
by Jarred Walton on September 12, 2007 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Gaming Performance
This is obviously the area where we expect the Blackbird to excel, and as we will see shortly it doesn't disappoint. As mentioned, we did encounter difficulties with 3DMark and F.E.A.R., with the former refusing to run at all and the latter generating wildly fluctuating performance. We also tested Bioshock, one of the best single player FPS games to come out in recent memory. Bioshock runs quite well at most resolutions with all detail settings maxed, but with the shipping drivers CrossFire support was not enabled. We will be testing out the latest Catalyst 7.9 drivers shortly to see if they address any of the difficulties mentioned here.
Besides testing at the overclocked 3.67 GHz and underclocked 2.33 GHz CPU speeds, we also conducted testing with and without CrossFire enabled. We will start with the actual performance scaling charts, but on the next page we will summarize the average performance increases users get from overclocking as well as CrossFire. When looking at the charts below, keep in mind that a relatively flat line indicates that the game is becoming CPU limited, whereas a steeply sloped line shows that the graphics subsystem is the primary bottleneck.
We tested exclusively in widescreen resolutions, and we included the four most common options. However, we feel it's reasonably safe to conclude that anyone purchasing the Blackbird 002 - or any system similar to this - will likely be running at a minimum 1920x1200 native resolution. In fact, if you have over $5,000 to spend on a new computer, we would definitely recommend picking up a 30" LCD to go along with the graphics hardware. Barring that, one of the large 1080p HDTVs would be a good option. What that means is that while we are often CPU limited at the lower resolutions in the above charts, most games are still primarily graphics card limited at high resolutions.
Where we have results from the Dell XPS 720 H2C, it often performs better than the Blackbird 002. While the graphics subsystem in the Blackbird is probably more expensive, the added DDR4 memory really doesn't seem to matter much. S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Company of Heroes, and Far Cry in particular have the SLI setup performing much better than the CrossFire configuration, and testing with older versions of Quake 4 indicates that NVIDIA continues to hold an advantage in that title, particularly under Windows Vista. In other titles, however, performance is a bit more of a tossup. The Half-Life 2 engine for example favors the ATI graphics cards without antialiasing, and performance also generally goes to the CrossFire solution with 4xAA.
Unfortunately, we don't have any Dell XPS results for Battlefield 2142 or Bioshock, and we would also like to rerun some of the other tests just to make sure the XPS numbers are correct. In other words, take the Dell numbers with a grain of salt as they are over two months old and we are unable to verify performance with the latest drivers under Windows Vista.
This is obviously the area where we expect the Blackbird to excel, and as we will see shortly it doesn't disappoint. As mentioned, we did encounter difficulties with 3DMark and F.E.A.R., with the former refusing to run at all and the latter generating wildly fluctuating performance. We also tested Bioshock, one of the best single player FPS games to come out in recent memory. Bioshock runs quite well at most resolutions with all detail settings maxed, but with the shipping drivers CrossFire support was not enabled. We will be testing out the latest Catalyst 7.9 drivers shortly to see if they address any of the difficulties mentioned here.
Besides testing at the overclocked 3.67 GHz and underclocked 2.33 GHz CPU speeds, we also conducted testing with and without CrossFire enabled. We will start with the actual performance scaling charts, but on the next page we will summarize the average performance increases users get from overclocking as well as CrossFire. When looking at the charts below, keep in mind that a relatively flat line indicates that the game is becoming CPU limited, whereas a steeply sloped line shows that the graphics subsystem is the primary bottleneck.
We tested exclusively in widescreen resolutions, and we included the four most common options. However, we feel it's reasonably safe to conclude that anyone purchasing the Blackbird 002 - or any system similar to this - will likely be running at a minimum 1920x1200 native resolution. In fact, if you have over $5,000 to spend on a new computer, we would definitely recommend picking up a 30" LCD to go along with the graphics hardware. Barring that, one of the large 1080p HDTVs would be a good option. What that means is that while we are often CPU limited at the lower resolutions in the above charts, most games are still primarily graphics card limited at high resolutions.
Where we have results from the Dell XPS 720 H2C, it often performs better than the Blackbird 002. While the graphics subsystem in the Blackbird is probably more expensive, the added DDR4 memory really doesn't seem to matter much. S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Company of Heroes, and Far Cry in particular have the SLI setup performing much better than the CrossFire configuration, and testing with older versions of Quake 4 indicates that NVIDIA continues to hold an advantage in that title, particularly under Windows Vista. In other titles, however, performance is a bit more of a tossup. The Half-Life 2 engine for example favors the ATI graphics cards without antialiasing, and performance also generally goes to the CrossFire solution with 4xAA.
Unfortunately, we don't have any Dell XPS results for Battlefield 2142 or Bioshock, and we would also like to rerun some of the other tests just to make sure the XPS numbers are correct. In other words, take the Dell numbers with a grain of salt as they are over two months old and we are unable to verify performance with the latest drivers under Windows Vista.
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0roo0roo - Sunday, September 16, 2007 - link
"eh, different strokes for different folks. falcon is more of the old type of boutique of mostly standard store bought items tweaked a bit that simply can't compete with this level of craftsmanship. the new case with its quality is quite nice, no shaving off metal thickness to save money there! just solid sweet aluminum. theres no way you could design a case like that yourself easily, let alone for that price. you'll just end up with a standard pc, save a little money but it won't match what hp is selling.
not all bad, if some brat tries to steal it they'll probably get a hernia while trying to run away lol:) as for the price, boutique computers cost a lot, just check out voodoopc or any other, they are high end stuff for people that want a high end pc that is top of the line and comes with tech support. not everyone enjoys the hassel of ordering 15 boxes of components through the mail then trying to slap it together and hope you don't have to rma anything.