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Voodoo gaming PCs
Dissociater
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey all,
My PC is slowly falling apart and I've decided that in the next few months I'm going to get another one. I have family member that works for HP (who now owns Voodoo gaming PCs) and I can get a discount on these Voodoo PCs.
Does anyone have any feedback on them? Are they any good, or at 1700-2000$ are they a waste of money?
This time around I really want to get some good bang for my buck. I don't have to worry about school or anything anymore and I can really focus on just getting a badass gaming PC since that's going to be its primary function but I'm really intimidated by the alienware prices.
Any thoughts?
My PC is slowly falling apart and I've decided that in the next few months I'm going to get another one. I have family member that works for HP (who now owns Voodoo gaming PCs) and I can get a discount on these Voodoo PCs.
Does anyone have any feedback on them? Are they any good, or at 1700-2000$ are they a waste of money?
This time around I really want to get some good bang for my buck. I don't have to worry about school or anything anymore and I can really focus on just getting a badass gaming PC since that's going to be its primary function but I'm really intimidated by the alienware prices.
Any thoughts?
Dissociater on
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Of course, I bought that computer before HP bought Voodoo, so I can't speak for their quality since then.
CPU: intel core2 quads at 2.83 GHz 12 MB L2 cache.
Graphic card: Duel Geforce 9800s SLI-config 512 MB.
Are those any good? is the 9800s a good card? I know that the letter at the end of the number stands for something but I don't think I know what the S is.
Here's a crash course on current gaming grade hardware.
AMD has an update to it's Phenom line out, Phenom II. These chips are approximately equal to higher end Core 2 quad cores in performance, and they cost about the same. The original Phenom is somewhat lackluster because they were limited by the manufacturing process and couldn't fully realize their design. Then you have the Athlon X2 previous generation of chips, which competes with the lower half of the core 2 line.
I'm not really sure how the naming schemes stack together, but there's a nice feature over on Anandtech that allows you to compare the benchmarks of most relevant cpus.
On to graphics cards, you have nvidia and ati, which was bought by amd, so ati and amd are sometimes used interchangeably.
Nvidia's biggest and fastest cards are the GTX 2## series, which are based on nvidia's newest gpu processor. The top few of these are mostly ridiculously large, fast and expensive, and you'll only really want one of these if you absolutely need to play at 1920x1200 or higher with all the shiny at maximum and still have high fps. The lower end of these compete with ati's newest cards, and last I checked the radeons are priced much better for their performance.
Nvidia's old 9800 line is basically even older 8800 cards with a few tweaks and smaller chip sizes. This means that because they're an older design, they need to have a very high clock speed or use SLI* to get comparable performance, and therefore create alot of heat and noise relative to the current generation.
Ati has their 4000 lineup of cards, the fastest being the 4870, followed by the 4850. They use ati's newest architecture, and when they were launched they were faster than cards that cost $100 more. These two cards are probably the best bang for the buck available right now, though it might depend on what sales and rebates you can get.
Here's a thread with a nice list of cards with short descriptions of them, and a suggested price list at the bottom (the prices are probably really out of date though).
The naming scheme of ati cards goes like this. Take the 4870 for an example. The first digit here, 4870, is the generation of the card, so 3000s would be older. The 2nd digit is the general performance grade of the card within the generation, the higher the better, so 4800 means it's about as fast as it gets, followed by 4600s, etc. The 4870 separates individual cards within the performance grade, so a 4870 is better than a 4850.
Nvidia's scheme is simple numbers, the higher the number, the faster the card (probably) is. They seem to have dropped the alphabet soup of the 8000 generation, though if you wish to know, that system organized the cards first by the 2nd digit, like 8800, 8600, etc. Then it tacked on letters to the end, like 8800gt, 8800gtx and such. The more letters there were, generally the faster it was. 8800gtx meant it was faster than a 8800gs. For cards with the same number of letters, the lower a letter was in the alphabet, the faster it was, ie. 8800gt > 8800gs. But that system is all fucked up for the 8800's because they released the 8800gt, which had a redesigned chip that was faster than the 8800gts, so you can't trust the name alone for that series.
*SLI is some nvidia marketing term that means using two video cards at the same time to run games, ati's version is called crossfire. In general it's advised to not use two card setups unless you want something faster than the best available single card there is. Performance when using two cards is very unpredictable, and it depends on how well the drivers are optimized for a particular game. Some games might not be compatible with dual cards, and then you're stuck using only half of the processing power you paid for.
(wow, that got long)
GT: Tanky the Tank
Black: 1377 6749 7425
And with the amount of money you save you can then build a much better, faster rig!
As for building my own computer, I just don't have the technical know how to build something comparable to say, a Voodoo firebird. I realize I'd save money that way but I'm not sure if the time it would take to get all the parts and build it myself, and the frustration of having stuff not work right would be worth it.
This PC is going to primarily be a gaming PC. I'm tired of buying multimedia pcs and spending the extra money on parts in there that I'm not really going to be using. So I wanted to buy a PC from a company that makes PCs for gamers and the only two I know of are voodoo and alienware, and the alienware prices seem insane to me.
Are there other alternatives?
Well, there's always Falcon Northwest. although I'm not sure how much better on pricing you do than Alienware. Still, even their Talon (their "budget" line, although only in comparison with their incredible Mach V systems) are pretty drool-worthy...
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Thanks, I'll check that out too.
well, if you want the absolute top of the line stuff its going to be stupid expensive. but if you take the "last gen" stuff and run with it you can make a machine that will run everything out now at top settings flawlessly for about half the price.
e: I am actually blown away that they would charge $2100 for this. Most of the parts have been available for a year or more. I was able to configure a similar rig for $1350 and change on a local reseller's site. I feel sorry for the suckers who've bought this machine, and very disappointed that Voodoo agreed to put their name on it.
You could make this thread a "[Let's Play] PC building!" he says hopefully...
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
http://www.bfgsystems.com/
I don't think that's it, because there is an official Nvidia page for the card.
The specs look worse than the 9800GT but it's pretty hard to tell without benchmarks, which I can't find.
They are very pricey, but if I ever chance in to some money like that I'd grab one in a second.
To people with money, that kind of convenience is worth it. VERY worth it, considering how well these boutique guys do.
I can't speak for the people, but I wasn't recommending so much as answering the OP's question about alternatives for boutique gaming rig shops. (Although Falcon's Talon systems are about as trinket free a route as you can go buying someone else's system.)
Since you asked, though, building a gaming PC is a great thing to do if you are comfortable doing it and have the know how already or the time to figure out how. That does not describe the majority of people, even the majority of PC gamers. Do you have a car? Did you build it yourself? You can build a sweet ass car for the amount of money you would buy one from a dealer. Do you own a dresser? Did you build it yourself? I've built a dresser before, and it turned out great. It took me about 20+ hours and access to my high school scene shop to do it but it turned out great and only cost me wood and hardware (plus 20+ hours of my time, which was cheap back then.) Do you ever eat in a restaurant (talk about huge markups)? Etc.
You can maximize a buying choice for cost (building own PC) or you can maximize it for other factors like time and convenience (buying a premade PC).
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
That being said, Voodoo and Falcon Northwest make great, fast systems if you're willing to pay a lot of money. Alienware isn't that great, though... it's like getting a Caddilac from the 1980s. It doesn't matter how much they polish it, it's still a Chevy with different body pannels.
Having tried SLI, I wouldn't recommend it. There just isn't enough support for it, not even in "big name" games (e.g. GTA4), and it's very sensitive to any driver maintenance releases. If it was always working as advertised, it might be worth the investment, but it's been out for years and it's still acting like it just came out last month.
Irontic comment, considering that Falcon charges $800 for the same case, only painted with an american flag.
I would argue that if you ever need that much power in your PC, you would be better off building it, even regardless of price, because by this point, you are not an average user, and would benefit from knowing how your PC fits together. Seriously, building your PC is easy. I really think that its an unwarranted fear of technology that drives people to boutique vendors.
GT: Tanky the Tank
Black: 1377 6749 7425
Probably that and they don't want to paint/light/cable manage their own box.
The service argument is somewhat valid, but individual parts come with warranties too, you know.
GT: Tanky the Tank
Black: 1377 6749 7425
Well, I'm sure some people's time is. But I sincerely doubt those special people buy enough Falcon Northwest systems to keep the business afloat.
this. its like adult legos
Falcon Northwest systems are expensive. Some people think they cost to much considering you can do it yourself. Other people think the cost is worth the service, support, and performance you get. I don't see either view being right or wrong.