AVADirect Core 2 CrossFire DDR3 Gaming System
AVADirect Core 2 CrossFire DDR3 Gaming System
Posted 12/31/2008 at 9:15am
| by Gordon Mah Ung
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Its official name is Core 2 CrossFire DDR3 Gaming System, but you can just call it the Quad Meister or Quaderino, if you’re into the brevity thing. What else could you possibly call a PC equipped with two ATI Radeon 4870 X2 cards (quad GPU cores), four Velociraptors (quad hard drives) and an overclocked Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 (uhh, quad cores)? Maybe we’re stretching here, but our nickname is certainly sexier than the PC’s official moniker.
This rig’s components are housed in an NZXT Khaos case with a custom laser-cut side. Optical storage is handled by a Samsung DVD burner and an LG Blu-ray burner. In magnetic storage, AVADirect hit us with a head scratcher. It equips the machine with four 150GB Velociraptor drives. Yeah, you read that right—WD makes a 150GB version of its spectacular Velociraptor drive. An Alphacool LCD display and a Corsair 1000HX PSU round out the package.
AVADirect stripes the four 150GB Velociraptor into one big RAID 0 array but doesn’t include a backup drive. Storing anything you care about on such an array is like trying to steal home—it’s a big risk for a big reward.
The last AVADirect machine we reviewed, the AVADirect Core 2 Duo SLI Gaming System (December 2007), was damaged during shipping and leaked coolant all over the place. This time, the company went with air cooling and, amazingly, was able to get the QX9770 overclocked to 4GHz using a heatsink fan the size of Jupiter. The good news is that it passed our stress test with flying colors. The bad news is that this machine also came damaged and had several screws stripped loose.
The Quaderino was roughly five percent slower than the Digital Storm Benchmark Crusher we reviewed last month (the Crusher’s water-cooled CPU was clocked about five percent faster). In gaming, the showdown was between the Crusher’s tri-SLI GTX 280s and the Quaderino’s Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards. In our UT3 test, the Quaderino was about 13 percent faster than the Crusher. In Crysis, however, the Radeons took a backseat to the GeForce cards. While the Digital Storm could belt out 54 fps in Crysis, the AVA Direct was down at 34 fps. Why? One theory is that since Crysis supports just three GPUs for gaming, the Radeons are at a disadvantage since each individual GPU core is slower than an individual GTX 280.
While Crysis is the more graphically intense game, we’re calling this fight a draw—especially since the Digital Storm system turns the price knob up to $9,000 while the AVADirect machine is $6,000.
The AVADirect box is a nice machine and sensibly priced, given the amount of hardware it packs. We question the storage configuration and are a bit concerned about getting two consecutive machines with shipping damage from the company. AVADirect needs to either look at its packaging or buy its shipping guy a cookie bouquet.
Still, the Quaderino is a fast box and represents well as the first PC we’ve received this year without a GeForce in it.
AVADirect Core 2 Crossfire DDR3
Ben Stiller
Fast and a good value for the hardware it packs.
Ben Stein
Loud and no safety net for small RAID array.
8
Vista 64-Bit Benchmarks
| Zero Point | AVADirect Core 2 CrossFire DDR3 Gaming System | |
|---|---|---|
| Premiere Pro CS3 | 1,260 sec | 582 sec (+116%) |
| Photoshop CS3 | 150 sec | 78 sec |
| ProShow | 1,415 sec | 728 sec |
| MainConcept | 1,872 sec | 1,195 sec |
| Crysis | 26 fps | 34 fps |
| Unreal Tournament 3 | 83 fps | 154 fps |
Our current desktop test bed consists of a quad-core 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700, 2GB of Corsair DDR2/800 RAM on an EVGA 680 SLI motherboard, two EVGA GeForce 8800GTX cards in SLI mode, a Western Digital 150GB Raptor and 500GB Caviar hard drives, an LG GGC-H20L optical drive, a Sound Blaster X-Fi and PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750 Quad PSU, and Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit.
Specifications
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 (3.2GHz overclocked to 4GHz) |
| MOBO | Asus Rampage Extreme (Intel X48 chipset) |
| RAM | Corsair 4GB DDR3/1600 |
| Videocard | Two Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2s in CrossFire |
| Soundcard | Onboard HD Audio |
| Storage | Four Western Digital Velociraptor 10K 150GB in RAID 0 |
| Optical | Samsung SH-S223, LG GGW-H20L |
| Case/PSU | NZXT Khaos/Corsair 1000HX PSU |
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scammed
February 06, 2010 at 12:52am
It absolutely blows me away these criminals are getting good
reviews from supposedly legitimate company's.AVA Direct took over $4200.00 from me and sent me a refurbished
component filled paperweight that was supposed to be a state of the
art gaming machine.When I called Misha Troshin to complain I was threatened and told
that I would comply with his wishes "or elseNo bad reviews, no bad press, no
talking to anyone about the used/repaired parts in the
notebook.......no nothing. It was “just business” he kept telling
me.
This man is a criminal sociopath. He
has repeated threatened and slandered me over the course of 2 years
and thumbed his nose at a court order to pay me a paltry sum of
$3500.00, barley ¾ the cost of my paperweight.This man couldn't tell the truth if he
was paid a thousand dollars a second to do it.And he just keeps getting away with it.
He has a stable of phony persona's and
peachy reviews he trots out at the drop of a dime as he spends the
entire work day scanning the internet for negative posts to refute
and fake replies to post.Reviews like the above make me sick, it's this kind of phony non-sense that tricked me into giving these criminals my money 2 years ago !
Hey Maximun PC, why don't you give me back my $4200.00 since yuor professional opinion of AVA Direct is so great ?
Lord knows those scumbags are never going to come clean.
STorpedo
January 03, 2009 at 12:16am
The ONLY reason anybody who knows anything about computers will get one built for them, is cause they don't want to bother watercooling/peltier cooling the CPU and the GPUs. Anybody else is LAZY. In fact, scratch that, I really don't think anybody is ALLOWED to proclaim themselves as computer-savvy by ordering a high end PC, no matter how difficult the configuration. HOW is there a market for these things?
Misha Troshin
December 31, 2008 at 12:44pm
Hey guys,
I can understand your confusion as to why we did not choose Core i7 for this rig. MaximumPC was kind enough to offer us this review opportunity mid August this year and while timing is everything in this business, unfortunately it was not on our side this time as we sent it in early September therefore by Intel's NDA we were not allowed to disclose any info on Core i7 though we had demo parts in stock in June.
Feel free to browse our site and give us a shout as we have plenty of configs for any taste, level of expertise and size of the wallet.
We wish you all Happy Holidays and hope to serve your computer needs in 09!
Regards,
Misha Troshin
Sales Manager, CMO
murixbob
December 31, 2008 at 12:33pm
They should have just threw in a RAID controller and do RAID 5 for some fault tolerance.
s3th
December 31, 2008 at 11:24am
Hmmm Maybe a Core i7 extreme and a Gigabyte EX58 Extreme Mobo would be more worth 6,000 bucks. Also a different Raid, I have to much music and shit to lose it all becasue of a Raid failure. But I guess if you already have an Portable HDD you can just back everything up on it, but if you don't have any measure of backup your risking alot.
IMO I would go with the nVidia anyday, I'm just not feelin AMD :/
AndyYankee17
December 31, 2008 at 10:16am
and what's with the + and - names? ben stien is so much better than ben stiller.
killerxx7
December 31, 2008 at 10:13am
LOL what a rip off you could build x58 system that would kill that thing for half the price!PLus for 6k why on earth would they put cheap red caths in there !
STorpedo
January 03, 2009 at 12:10am
it's not common-common, but it's pretty common in high-end full towers, cause heat goes up, so they use the PSU's spot for better airflow.
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