Quantcast
Reviews

AVADirect Core 2 CrossFire DDR3 Gaming System

comment Commentsprint Printemail EmailDeliciousDiggStumbleUponRedditSlashdot

 

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.

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

COMMENTS
avatarThey're still selling these?

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? 

Login or register to post comments
avatarAVADirect's explanation for configuration selection

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

Login or register to post comments
avatarThey should have just threw

They should have just threw in a RAID controller and do RAID 5 for some fault tolerance.

Login or register to post comments
avatarHmmm Maybe a Core i7 extreme

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 :/

Login or register to post comments
avatarand what's with the + and -

and what's with the + and - names? ben stien is so much better than ben stiller.

Login or register to post comments
avatarLOL what a rip off you could

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 !

Login or register to post comments
avatarpsu

woah is the psu on the bottom?

that's weird...  

Login or register to post comments
avatarit's not common-common, but

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.

Login or register to post comments
avatarActually

Actually its pretty common...

Login or register to post comments
avatarCould have been better...

Could have been better (why no X58?) but looks amazing

Login or register to post comments
RESOURCE CENTER

THIS MONTH's ISSUE
Maximum PC
FEATURE 21 Instant PC UpgradesBUYER'S GUIDE Budget videocards: which pass, which fail?HOW TOSupercharge Firefox & Maximize your SSDFEATURE3 trends that will save PC Gaming WHITE PAPERSurge supression

Don't have an account? Register Now! Forgot password?