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AVADirect Starts Shipping Monster i7 Gaming Notebook

Paul Lilly — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 08:00:54 -0600

AVADirect this week announced the availability of the Clevo X8100 SLI laptop, calling it the "world's most powerful i7 SLI gaming notebook" on the planet. Judging by the spec sheet, AVADirect might be spot on.

The Clevo X1800 boasts a generous 18.4-inch full HD (1920x1080) display, but it's the hardware underneath the hood that's most impressive. Buyers can configure up to a Core i7 920XM processor, one or two Nvidia GTX 285M graphic chips, up to 8GB of DDR3-1333 memory, and up to 3 hard drives or SSDs in a RAID 0 or 1 array. Other specs include 3 USB 2.0 ports, Firewire, an eSATA port, HDMI output, a 7-in-1 memory card reader, 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, 2.0MP webcam and of course Windows 7.

"If you recall, June of 2009 we began to sell the Clevo M980NU. It was a Core 2 Duo based notebook with GTX 280's in SLI. It was a very exciting time for us as a boutique builder, because nobody out there had that type of product on the market. Now, we have the same chassis used by Clevo and a mobile Core i7 processor. Not only will this reduce bottleneck within the notebook, but increase performance up to 50%. Given the nature of it's size and power I can easily suggest the Clevo X8100 notebook for a desktop replacement. There is nothing like raw, mobile gaming power at the tip of your fingers." says Misha Troshin, CMO and co-owner of AVADirect.

Pricing starts at $2,500, which buys a Core i7 720QM processor, Nvidia GTX 285M graphics, 2GB of DDR3-1066 memory, 320GB hard drive, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

Product Page

Image Credit: AVADirect

AVADirect Custom PC

Gordon Mah Ung — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:00:00 -0600

A multiplier too far? This gaming rig is fast, but not quite stable

What sets a boutique builder apart from a huge OEM? Taking risks with hardware, that’s what.

Unfortunately, taking risks doesn’t always pan out. Take AVADirect’s Custom PC. Hot on the heels of numerous Core i7 rigs tipping the 4GHz and 4.2GHz range, AVADirect went a step further by clocking its Custom PC gaming rig at 4.4GHz. The company even goes so far as to include a custom profile for 4.7GHz—a speed the company had originally promised it would hit out of box, until cooler heads prevailed.

The bad news is that even at 4.4GHz, we were able to break the AVADirect machine with our stress test. The good news is that the machine remained stable in our benchmarking runs. Still, if we could stress it enough to reboot in two hours, someone else could, too. Working with AVADirect, we were able to get the machine to rock-solid levels at 4.4GHz, but it took several days of testing and more than 25 different BIOS combinations—which somewhat tarnishes the feat.

Instability isn’t the only issue we have with the Custom. We’re not sure we’d make the same hardware choices the company did. We certainly can’t quibble with the use of Intel’s Core i7-975 Extreme Edition, nor the 6GB of Corsair DDR3/1333, 1KW PSU, and EVGA X58 SLI Classified x58 board. Heck, we even like the 1TB of RAID 1 storage for bulk storage. What we’re not totally sold on is the use of four OCZ 30GB Vertex MLC SSDs in RAID 0. It’s not the Vertex drives, per se, it’s the use of the onboard RAID controller. With magnetic storage, we haven’t seen onboard RAID scale with four drives very well, and the SSDs probably make it worse. In informal tests with HD Tach, we saw an average read speed of only 120MB/s on the RAID. Velocity Micro tried the same trick with its Raptor SE last month, but its use of the ultra-pricey Intel SLC drives helped put average reads in a somewhat defensible 250MB/s range.

AVADirect's Custom PC includes a third graphics card for PhysX fans.

Of course, even more controversial is the GPU choice. With ATI’s Radeon HD 5870 crowned as the new king of the hill, we were surprised AVADirect went with two hotter and hungrier EVGA GeForce GTX 295 cards. But once we saw the third x16 slot stuffed with a GeForce 250 GTS card, we figured AVADirect is buying into the PhysX hype.

In performance, the Custom PC is fast, but not where you’d expect a 4.4GHz box to fall. Compared to previous Vista-based boxes, it’s almost on par with the 4GHz Maingear Core i7 that we reviewed in August. The quad-SLI solution also showed scaling weakness in our UT3 benchmark against the tri-SLI rigs. Tri-SLI machines pushed the 200fps mark in UT3, while the quad was mired at 155fps. Of course, you can shrug this off as meaningless since 150fps is pretty excessive in a mostly DX9 game. In Crysis, the Custom is second only to the Velocity Micro. That same Velocity Micro, however, is faster in every benchmark than the AVADirect, and ships with Windows 7, to boot. AVADirect will, of course, provide a free Windows 7 upgrade, but why ship with Vista now?

The final verdict on the AVADirect Custom PC is that it’s actually a pretty nice machine if you buy into the PhysX game, but instability on a $7,000 rig is still unforgiveable.

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.