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AVADirect Offering Laptops with Core i7 CPU, 3 Hard Drives

Paul Lilly — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:44:40 -0500

And so it begins. AVADirect announced the upcoming availability of its Clevo D900F laptop, and what makes this special is it's the first one to incorporate Intel's Core i7 processor, the company claims.

"By using a desktop Core i7 processor, the notebook is able to enjoy all the benefits that accompany this hardware platform," AVADirect said in a statement. "Some of the benefits include triple-channel memory, a first ever in a notebook design."

Everything about the Clevo D900F screams desktop replacement, and does so in a big way. The tri-channel memory (up to 12GB of it) comes clocked at 1333MHz "with 1600MHz on the horizon." And if a Core i7 wasn't enough, AVADirect also crams Nvidia's GTX 280M graphics into the mix.

So what does Intel think about a Core i7-based notebook?

"While Intel does not encourage manufacturers to use desktop processors for notebook designs, manufacturers are going to use our processor in many different and innovative ways," an Intel spokesperson said.

You an pre-order the Clevo D900F now starting at $2,500. Shipping will begin next month.

Image Credit: AVADirect

AVADirect Core 2 CrossFire DDR3 Gaming System

Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:15:00 -0600

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 Duo SLI Gaming System

Nathan Edwards — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 18:33:49 -0600

A missing hose clamp resulted in a coolant leak during shipping, but the vendor’s tech promptly replaced it.

Our first thought upon opening AVADirect’s new Core 2 Duo SLI Gaming System was, “Wow, this is heavy.” Our second, “Oooh, but it’s pretty!” was followed shortly by a third, “It’s bleeding!” A cursory inspection revealed that the system was shipped without one of its two CPU-cooler hose clamps, and was indeed leaking AVA’s “bloody red” coolant into the machine. Disconcerting, to say the least. We notified AVADirect of the problem, and they dispatched a tech to fix it. Thereafter, despite some red residue on one of the 8800’s DVI ports, the rig worked perfectly.

Aside from this initial gaffe, the AVADirect impressed us with its build quality. The first thing we saw when we opened the SilverStone Temjin TJ07 case was a sprawl of water-cooling tubes running to both GPUs, the RAM, and the CPU. The aforementioned “bloody red” cooling fluid is augmented by four red cold-cathode tubes along the sides of the acrylic window, lending a fearsome aspect to the rig’s innards. Cables and wires were neatly routed along the inside of the case, but certainly not as neatly as in last month’s HP Blackbird. The modular 1,200W Thermaltake Toughpower PSU provides a ridiculous amount of power while remaining mostly hidden beneath a partition at the bottom of the case.

AVA certainly makes good use of the Temjin’s seven 5.25-inch external drive bays; the first two hold an AlphaCool white-on-blue LCD that displays system stats like drive space, CPU, and RAM utilization, as well as a faux-analog clock. The next bay holds a Pioneer Blu-ray reader/DVD burner combo drive. Two more drive bays contain the Koolance reservoir pumps that drive the liquid-cooling system and display per-reservoir fluid temps, leaving just two bays free.

Does this mess o’ tubes make a difference? Yep! The max idle temperature was 35 C, and during our stress tests no core got above 72 C. Not shabby. And other than our initial leakage issue, the cooling system is very neatly installed, routed, and configured. There are no wasted pipes, and the whole thing looks terribly impressive. Maybe too impressive. While we appreciate the thought, most folks would probably agree that water cooling is overkill for some of the components—we’re looking at you, overclocked RAM.

AVA overclocked this machine to the nines. The Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 CPU is running at 3.67GHz, up from 3.0GHz, the dual EVGA e-GeForce 8800 Ultras are “superclocked” to 655MHz, and even the OCZ RAM is ratcheted up to 1150MHz. We tested the rig with our Prime95 stress test, and detected no stability problems.

The overclocking shows, too. Despite shipping with Vista (a questionable choice), the AVADirect blazed through our FEAR benchmark at 184fps, faster than any other rig we’ve tested. Its Quake score was a respectable 205fps—nearly twice as fast as the Blackbird, and right up there with the fastest XP rigs we’ve seen. What can we say, except that Nvidia’s OpenGL driver, even in Vista, is still better than AMD’s.

Performance was top-notch and easily bested our new quad-core zero-point system (see page 70)—no surprise, as the AVADirect box sings along at clock speeds 1GHz higher. Our point of reference against other rigs is blank, as this is the first machine tested using our new benchmarks. We did, however, run our old Photoshop CS2 script on the AVADirect, and while it’s fast, the rig’s scores were a bit slower than those of the recently reviewed Dell and HP PCs.

The rest of the AVADirect’s hardware is just as high-powered, if not exactly what we expected. The Asus Xonar D2 soundcard sounds great and includes color-coded backlit inputs and plenty of ports, but no hardware processing. This is the first rig we’ve tested in a while that shipped with a dedicated soundcard other than a SoundBlaster X-Fi; most rigs, if they eschew Creative, opt for onboard audio. It’s a relief not to have to listen to RealTek audio.

The 150GB Raptors in RAID 0 are speedy but will leave system owners walking the high-wire without a net since there’s no backup drive. Would a simple terabyte drive have hurt, guys? And why not install XP while you’re at it? The AVADirect box is the first to impress us with its almost XP-like gaming performance, but let’s face it, gaming and Vista are still an odd couple. Another letdown: Where’s the Penryn? When the company said it was shipping us a “next-gen” box, we thought it would include Penryn and Nvidia’s G92, but the machine included a 1,333MHz Kentsfield CPU and GeForce 8800 Ultras. Hardly next-gen.

Despite these quibbles, we were generally impressed with the system’s stability and performance. The horror of a leaky water-cooling system was ameliorated by the quick corrective action taken by AVADirect’s optional on-site tech support.

While we wouldn’t necessarily buy this exact configuration, we’d definitely go to AVADirect for their nigh-infinite customizability, good build quality, and excellent tech support.