Nate's blog

I just finished reading a blog post from a PC builder and it really made me think about the differences between the big guys and everyone else. In the computer industry, we generally talk about "Tier 1 OEMs" and "Boutique Vendors" as the big guys and the little guys, however that is often misleading. Dictionary.com defines the noun "boutique" as:

Some months ago, NVIDIA went on the official warpath against Intel, bringing the CPU versus GPU debate into full force. If you missed it, Jen-Hsun Huang basically said that CPUs are plenty powerful now, and that consumers should be spending their hard-earned money on video cards rather than big CPUs. Just about every review site took off with this idea, and began their own exaggerated testing that doesn't really answer anyone's questions. I'm going to try to wrap this all up for you now with a no-nonsense editorial about the whole situation.

The recent reviews I've read dealing with this situation seek to answer a pretty easy question: given $1000, should you buy a QX9770 or two 9800GX2s? However, this only gives us the two options and nothing in the middle; there is no option for a moderately priced CPU and a moderately priced GPU, only the extremes which are easy to quantify. To add to the consumer confusion, these sites are usually offering gaming tests alone to prove one side or another, where a pair of 9800GX2s can really shine. But let's look at the whole picture for a minute, shall we?

Wow, it's been almost 2 months since my last post! I've got to change that. Needless to say, it's been busy around here, but that seems to always be the case.

I've been playing with some new tech over the past few weeks, so I thought I'd let you in on the results. I'm going to hit up the good old unordered list for this one:

I just finished posting the Odin details. If you want to know what "ridiculous fast" really means, throw a SAS controller and 2 15,000 rpm hard drives on a ~3.6ghz Core 2 Quad with Quad-SLI. Then, grab not 4GB, but 8GB of really fast DDR2 to keep everything loaded. Bring your 30" LCD to this party, or two for that matter!

Thor is continuing to hold his own in just about every single application. When you compare a 3.8ghz dual-core processor to a 2.8ghz quad-core, there is really no question which is faster every day in every application. We're not about trying to sell you more cores when they don't matter, we want you to have the highest FPS you can obtain today.

The Njord line-up is also really awesome. Lower prices in the Core 2 Duo line have enabled us to offer a E6750 that will clock around 3.2ghz. On the AM2 front, the Black Edition should give us almost 3.0ghz, and both are mated to insanely fast DDR2 in excess of 950mhz. 775 is still the business desktop for anyone who's time equals money. This thing flies through just about any test you can throw at it.

The Magni is mostly unchanged, but we have stepped up the memory specs a bit. DDR2-800 C4 is now the standard for any PC we build, unlike those other guys who stick you with DDR2-667 or even worse DDR2-533. We're still using an Athlon X2 that clocks in around 2.5ghz, and it's still really quick, but with integrated graphics using some system resources, you will see a noticable change between Magni and Njord.

I've been reading Quad SLI reviews today, as yesterday was the official launch of the technology, and I can't believe what I'm reading! Really guys, let's get this straight for once:

Crysis is not multi-threaded!

In our testing, we saw that Crysis would run pretty heavy on one core, and that the NVIDIA drivers would use up a little bit of another with the DirectX overhead. There was almost no usage on the other two cores in a quad-core setup.

This goes back to my post about Gaming Machines. If you want the best performance in Crysis (and many other titles), get a 45nm Core 2 Duo and overclock it very high. The only thing that matters for that game is core speed right now. It is not until 1920x1200 with very high settings that Quad-SLI can really make a difference, but even then, our processors aren't fast enough to push it.

So, in short, gaming is still not ready for quad-core, let alone octo-core Skulltrail platforms. Maybe sometime in the next generation we will be able to use all 4 cores of a quad, but until then, clockspeed is still king.

I just wanted to wish everyone a very happy Saint Patrick's Day, and also whet your appetite a bit about two new products coming in the next couple of days.

First off is the new Thor which focuses more on framerates and less on hype than ever before. Nothing really earth shattering to report unfortunately, but I can report that we are very close to the magic 4.0 Giga-hertz mark with this machine.

Second is the new Odin, which is departing just a hair from it's current form, in a really great way. When I started thinking about Odin Gen 2, number one on the list was making it faster than Thor in every application. Of course that would mean a very fast Quad-Core processor from Intel on the Nvidia 780i platform, but what else? Obviously there would need to be a ton of RAM, so 8 gigabytes of DDR2-1000+ should do the job. But what else? 

Hmm...

Check back later in the week to find out.

I'm asked on a fairly regular basis about how much a gaming PC should cost. If this was a perfect world, they would cost a little more than their console counterparts, however this is not a perfect world. Microsoft does not pay me to install Windows on my PC's, nor do I get money from EA every time I ship a PC that will play their games. The fact of the matter is that if all we did with our computers was play video games, there would be no market for "Gaming PC's." Luckily for me, PC's can do much more than just play video games, which is why we pay more for them than our Xboxs or Playstations. While I play Team Fortress 2, for instance, I listen to my iTunes, record TV with Media Center and could even be transcoding a DVD to DIVX. I'd like to see your 360 do that!

Unfortunately, PC gamers put so much higher demands on our PC's that we require much more powerful hardware than our consoles contain. Even Sony's Playstation 3 with its very strong Cell processor, G70-based video and XDR memory struggles when you run Linux on it because of slow hard drive performance and a measly 256 MB of RAM. Game consoles are so inexpensive partly because they are partially paid for with royalties, but also because their hardware is very specialized for their sole purpose: running video games.

We have launched two new Njords, the Njord SLI and Njord AM2. Check them out right over to the left.

Njord SLI is our most affordable yet enjoyable gaming platform. At $1800, this PC packs all kinds of new technology, including the GeForce 9600GT video card, NVIDIA's 750i chipset and our most favorite upgrade, Vista 64 Bit. We've kept the E6750 processor because it is still an excellent performer, and the latest G0 steppings are clocking in around 3.2ghz on average.

Njord AM2 is more of a minor change than a new generation. We've up'd the memory to 4GB, Vista to 64 Bit, and the processor to AMD's X2 5000+ Black Edition. The Black Edition processors have an unlocked multiplier just like the Intel Extreme Edition, but at a fraction of the cost. We will see this processor around 2.8ghz, but with less work done per cycle, Njord SLI will outperform it all day.

So check out the new products and let me know what you think over in the user forums.

Hello Everyone!

Today, Nordic PC is proud to officially launch two of our new PC's: the Magni and the Njord 775. Yeah, I know, they don't have new names, but why mess with something that is working? Check out the new specs by clicking the links over to the left.

One of the biggest updates is the increase in memory from 2GB to 4GB with Njord and above. This also means that Nordic PC will be shipping Windows Vista Ultimate 64 Bit on every PC higher than Magni from here on out. This is not only to give you access to all 4GB of memory that you pay for, but also because of the insane performance increase that comes with massive amounts of RAM. Upgrade to 8GB if you really want to feel fast again, just let me know and we'll set you up.

Above that, we are offering optional upgrades to the Core 2 Duo E8400 on Njord 775 for extreme performance. Once the 45nm Quad Cores are available, they will also be available as an upgrade. We will not offer the Q6600 because of several factors, not the least of which being compatibility issues and very poor overclocking headroom.

One sad day has come however, as I have just heard that our coveted Mitsumi Floppy/Card Reader is no longer available from our usual distributors. Also, the passive 8500GT from XFX seems to have dried up, which is an even bigger shame. Needless to say, until these are resolved, we will only be accepting custom build orders.

Stay tuned for new Odin, Thor, Njord AM2+, and Njord SLI!

UPDATE: Pictures are up here!

I must say that AppLAN IX was a total success in my book. Everything ran pretty much on time and all of the tournaments had great turnouts. I need to give some big congratulations to [A]ssisted [S]uicide for pretty much pwning the CS: Source tournament yet again. These guys operate very well together, and really demonstrated the power of team work. Also, I need to thank NVIDIA for getting us some great prizes, especially Jacob and Jeff. Those guys ROCK! Lastly, if anyone found a Sony digital camera out there while cleaning up, please let me know. Our image gallery is hungry for those pictures.

The next big event with the Appalachian State University Gaming Club is slated for April 19th, I believe. AppLAN X will probably be the best LAN ever, so make sure to put it on your calendar. We'll have details as they come.

This event was really neat, because it was the first one after Christmas and a lot of people had new gear. Vista is starting to take off, and I would say that atleast 10% of the room was running it. It was interesting to note however, that most every version was the 32 bit one. I've been pushing the 64 bit version for a while now, and everyone should know that your 32 bit product key works with 64 bit just as well. So go grab another 2GB or 4GB of RAM and start loving your computer again. We'll have more about Vista in a dedicated article soon.