Acer and Gateway have launched a mess of new machines, and Atomic's gotten the scoop on the gaming boxes.
Acer has launched a Predator PC today, packed full of the latest grunty hardware and all wrapped up in a shiny "gaming hardcore" shell.
We reviewed the previous Predator system, and despite its garish looks, we were pretty impressed. Sure, it's not a system we'd build ourselves, but for someone with money to burn and a hankering for an out-of-the-box gaming system, it was a good solution. We had a chance to see the new Predator G7750 at today's launch event (and we've taken a mess of photos!), and it's a whole new level of power. And it's very red (check out our sneakily procured gallery of pics!).
The new Predator features an Extreme Edition Core i7 processor (though no one could tell us which one of the three in the family), up to 12GB of RAM and up to three video cards in SLI - all running at x16 thanks to the X58 chipset. We're not sure of the total spec we got to look at today, but we can confirm it had two GTX480s running - you could feel the heat from a yard away and hear them from even further!
The same hot-swappable HDD bays make a return, too, as well as a mess of card reading options, a Blu Ray drive, and a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi soundcard. The full unit's accompanied by the 3D capable GD245Hq 23.6in monitor, and a Logitech keyboard & mouse.
It's an attractive bundle, but it would want to be - it'll cost you from $4,699 for the whole shebang.
Amusingly, once the presentation was over, we bullied our way to the machine and did what we do best - we plugged in our USB stick packed with benching software and put it through its paces! Annoyingly, however, nothing seemed to work - Crysis and Vantage both refused to run, so we suspect the system might have been built more for display than actual performance. However, we really wanted to push those 480s - thankfully Kombustor worked just fine.
The crowd of other journos wanting to gawk at the 3D monitor were pressing in close behind, but we managed to seriously stress the system to at least see how hot it would run. Whoa... after about 90 seconds the second card hit 103 degrees... with more time under load, we're sure it would hit at least 110.
And this is just two cards, spaced out for airflow. We literally fear the amount of heat a triple SLI rig would generate. The case only has two exhaust fans running, and the CPU is cooled by a liquid rig. It's... not an ideal cooling situation.
Gateway's back - no bullshit!That's the catchphrase of the newly relaunched Gateway, and there was a new gaming system from the recently Acer-acquired brand. The Gateway FX series of gaming machines are powered by Core i7/i5 processors, and can be specced up to the latest Nvidia and ATI graphics offerings - they're effectively a gunned down version of Predator in terms of spec - premium parts, but no fancy liquid cooling system.
The case design is more austere, too, and we think it's a better look - more reminiscent of recent efforts from Cooler Master, for instance, than the over-the-top Alienware-killer that is the Predator. It'll deliver much the same power - though not triple SLI, which even we think is a touch of overkill - for less cash, and with much the same features (card readers, neat case design, Blu Ray and so on).
We've asked for review samples of both systems, so keep an eye out for our full opinions, along with the usual testing, in an upcoming issue. Acer and Gateway also launched a whole mess of other storage, portable and corporate solutions today, so check out our sister-site PC Authority for more info on the rest of the range.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012