Posted 10/02/08 at 10:59:47 AM by Paul Lilly

Last summer Acer teased gamers by announcing the menacing looking Aspire Predator gaming PC along with a color-matching metallic copper 24-inch G24 LCD display. Now the company says it's ready for the US market and, presumably, to take on HP, Falcon Northwest, and Alienware in the high end OEM gaming segment.

It would take an orgy of high end components to live up to the machine's "Faster. Deeper. Harder. Further." tagline, though Acer's also offering a more moderately priced configuration. Starting at $1,649, The G7700-UQ9300A sports an Intel Core 2 Quad 9300 water-cooled processor, a GeForce 9600GT videocard, 8GB of DDR2 memory, two 640GB hard drives, a DVD reader and DVD burner, and Vista Home Premium 64-bit. For those with a little more loot, $2,199 nudges the processor up to a Q9550 and exchanges the 9600GT for a 9800GTX.

On the monitor front, the Acer G24 widescreen display boasts a 50,000:1 contrast ratio, a 1920x1200 resolution, and 2ms (grey to grey) response time.

Does Acer's Predator appeal to you? Hit the jump and post your thoughts.

Read More

Comments 

6

TAGS 

rigs, prebuilt, acer aspire, predator

Posted 09/09/08 at 07:00:03 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Games like Crysis prove to be an acid test for game hardware because of their insatiable hunger for computer resources. Although these hi-fi games are a visual treat, they are at times blamed for hastening the demise of PC gaming by making it an expensive hobby.

But Crytek, EA, Nvidia and UltraPC have joined hands to build a Crysis Warhead-ready PC – capable of running the upcoming game in high spec at a smooth 30 frames per second, which will help them debunk the notion that one needs to spend thousands of bucks on a gaming PC.

The Warhead PC will feature an Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 @2.66GHz, Nvidia GeForce 9800GT 512MB graphics card, G31 mATX, 2GB memory and 250GB hard drive. The price of the machine has been revealed to be a very reasonable $699. All said, the aesthetics are bland and might not appeal to eclectic gamers.

Interested parties can sign-up for updates, and subsequently, pounce on the rig when it appears along with the game on September 16th, 2008.

Read More

Comments 

16

TAGS 

nvidia, EA, Crytek, gaming rig, rigs, cheap, cysis, warhead, ultrapc, affordable

Posted 09/04/08 at 11:18:32 AM by Paul Lilly

If you've been waiting for Dell to officially release its Mini 9 notebook line, your wait is now over. On the high end, a starting price of $449 buys a Mini Inspiron 910 with an Intel Atom N270 processor (1.6GHz, 533MHz frontside-bus, 512K cache), 1GB of DDR2 RAM clocked at 533MHz, a 16GB SSD, and other odds and ends tied together with Windows XP. Cut the hard drive and RAM in half and you can knock $50 off the price, or drop down to the Inspiron 910u for $349. It comes with the same goodies as the higher end models, except with a 4GB SSD, 512MB DDR2, and Ubuntu 8.04 instead of Windows XP.

For those willing to wait one more day, Dell's blog claims that as of 6 a.m. Central tomorrow, "you'll be able to get a Mini for only $99with the purchase of a Studio 15, XPS M1530, or XPS M1330 laptop through 6 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 9 (U.S. only)."

Anyone feeling enticed?

Read More

Comments 

3

TAGS 

mobile, notebook, dell, laptop, ultraportable, rigs, mini 9, insprion

Posted 08/27/08 at 12:30:00 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

A Dream Machine graced the inaugural issue of Maximum PC back in 1998, and the tradition of building an annual no-holds-barred PC beast has continued unabated since then. True to form, this year’s rig is the most audacious, most powerful dream rig to date. Equipped with no fewer than eight processing cores, four graphics cores, and five hard drives, DM2008 is probably also our most controversial build. But as Lando said, it’s not our fault.

In the old days, we would just pick the very best hardware available. But those were simpler times, when parts vendors all got along and their sole mission was to provide you with badass gear. Sadly, the stakes are so high today that politics has an undue influence on hardware configurations.

To find out who's on our naughty list, and see an in-depth kick-ass examination of our Dream Machine, hit the jump! And hold onto your hat.

Read More

Comments 

49

TAGS 

dream machine, hardware, features, kick ass, rigs, dream machine 2008

Posted 08/26/08 at 12:57:24 PM by Paul Lilly

It remains to be seen whether the recent Mac clone phenomenon will turn out to be a legit business or a series of scams, but either way, things aren't looking good. You may recall reading about Psystar, a recent startup who purports to sell Open Computer setups running Max OS X Leopard. Despite confusion over where the company actually resides, the company appears to be in a legal battle with Apple over multiple counts of violating copyright, trademark, and breach-of-contract and unfair competition laws.

And what of Open Tech, the other Mac cloner who recently hit the headlines? In just three weeks after its official Mac-clone product launch, Open Tech vice president Elijah Samaroo sent an email to Wired.com announcing the sale of Open Tech's web store for a cool $50,000. Unlike Psystar, who sells pre-installed Mac-clones, Open Tech was offering to sell PCs with instructions detailing how to install any OS of choice, including Apple's, but is now prepared to let go of its "trade secrets" if it can find a buyer.

But wait, there's more! Adding more comic relief to the ridiculously high asking price for a shady startup, anyone interested in purchasing Open Tech can use the site's PayPal button to transfer the $50,000 and "as soon as the payment is received the Open Tech Papwork and Documents will be faxed or mailed to you."

No thanks?

Read More

Comments 

1

TAGS 

apple, Mac, rigs, clone

Posted 08/20/08 at 10:17:36 AM by Paul Lilly

Atom

The ultraportable craze has been nothing short of ultra popular, and it might get even better next month. While Intel senior VP Pat Gelsinger was delivering his keynote during IDF on Monday, Cnet claims an Intel employee spilled the beans on the company's plans to offer up a dual-core Atom in September, a move that would make the Nettop market even more popular than it already is. Specifics weren't disclosed, but if earlier reports hold true, look for the new hyperthreading-capable chip to come clocked at 1.6GHz per core on a 533MHz front-side bus with 1MB of L2 cache.

Dunnington and Nehalem

On a more official note, Intel revealed plans to also offer its six-core Dunnington server processor in September, which will be the last member of Intel's 45nm Penryn family. And while on the topic of cores, Intel also showed the first eight-core Nehalem chip. Gelsinger said the new chip will be a monolithic design with all eight cores crammed onto a single piece of silicon. Tasty!

Read More

Comments 

2

TAGS 

intel, mobile, notebook, processor, atom, dual-core, rigs, nettop

Posted 08/15/08 at 12:28:59 PM by Paul Lilly

Forget any talk of shortages or competitive pressure from VIA, Intel's Atom processors are thriving amid the recent Netbook and Mobile Internet Device (MID) movement. "Atom is off to a very, very rapid start, far exceeding our expectations when we started the year," CFO Stacy Smith said in an interview Tuesday. "It's the perfect recession product to have in the marketplace."

The success of its Atom processor has helped Intel achieve a 25 percent rise in quarterly profit despite a weak global economy, with Smith maintaining an overall revenue forecast in the third quarter between $10.0 and $10.6 billion.

Yields are good too. According to Smith, Intel gets about 2,500 Atom processors per silicon wafer, and while that's not quite as good as on a Core or Xeon chip, it's enough to ensure strong profitability on Atom CPUs. Still, Intel remains cautiously optimistic.

"We'll know kind of in six months how much of this demand (for Atom) is real and how much is customers thinking they're going to win in the market place and double-ordering," Smith said. "It seems to be growing the market rather than cannibalizing existing PC sales."

Will Intel's Atom chips continue to exceed expectations now that Centrino 2 platforms are starting to trickle out?

Read More

Comments 

4

TAGS 

intel, mobile, notebook, laptop, processor, atom, rigs, netbook

Posted 08/12/08 at 08:51:29 AM by Paul Lilly

Last September, Dell became the first major computer maker to announce plans to go carbon neutral, saying it would do so by the end of 2008. That gives the OEM five more months to reach its self imposed deadline, but now the company is saying it has already achieved its goal.

"We're driving 'green' into every aspect of our global business," said CEO Michael Dell in a statement. "This includes setting new standards for energy efficiency and green power, delivering environmental and cost savings for customers, and aligning key growth priorities with our focus on preserving our shared Earth."

In the quest to become carbon neutral, Dell has been working with Conservation International to protect nearly 600,000 acres of tropical forestland in Madagascar that might otherwise have been destroyed, allowing the OEM to claim a half-million ton of carbon emissions savings over the next five years. Another big boost came from reducing indirect emissions from facilities energy use. Dell has upgraded light fixtures at its Texas campus, updated heating and cooling systems around the world, and installed occupancy sensors for light. By doing these things, Dell says it was able to reduce its annual carbon dioxide footprint by 20,000 tons.

Read More

Comments 

8

TAGS 

dell, OEM, rigs, environment, carbon