WidowPC Gaming Computers - PCGamer Rates Widow IX2 SLI "Excellent"
November 8th, 2007 - 
A huge thanks to Stephen, Michael, Bill, Kyle, Shaun, Doug, Greg, Mike, Ryan and
everyone else who helped get this system to PC Gamer Magazine. With only a couple days to get it out the door, several people worked on Saturday to get it out on time. This was a big
effort by the whole team and resulted in a big win and showed the magazine what kind of work we do for our customers on a regular basis. We received an "Excellent" - the highest possible score - on their chart. This is a big win
and the score publicly highlights the excellence this team delivers!
Logan Decker, PCGamer's Senior Editors for Hardware, brings up some interesting
points in his review. The first one has to do with the operating system,
Vista 64 bit, and why we chose the 64 bit version of Vista for this review
system. As you probably know, 64 bit drivers can be a pain to find for
legacy printers, monitors, etc. However, all new hardware comes with 64 bit
drivers or Microsoft won't certify it for Vista. So, we think the time for Vista is now and we recommend the 64 bit version for the hard core gamers we love, who want the highest levels of performance from their gaming systems.
The 64 bit architecture of the processor, combined with the multiple threads of native 64 bit instruction sets, layered on top of the 64 bit operating system
allowed us to bake a gaming system that proved its a tasty treat for gamers. With gaming performance scores that were out of this world, record breakers for PCGamer, what kind of gamer would order up anything different. I mean 32 bit is so 2006! Most modern games are now programmed for a
64 bit instruction set. This means that Vista 64 bit will run the game
much faster than the 32 bit flavor.
However, with every cloud must come rain. Because 3DMark06 has
compatibility issues with Vista 64 bit, the benchmark showed a slower 3DMark and
much higher game score. In this case, this is a normal phenomenon as
3DMark will commonly only use one video card under Vista 64bit even when the
system is set for dual card SLI mode. I actually didn't know about this
3DMark issue until after we had delivered the system to Logan. I know how
confusing that must have been for him to see the lower 3DMark score along-side
the record breaking game scores.
Logan also mentions the benefits of the high speed SSD drive. This SSD
drive is the only one that out performs the Western Digital Raptor.
However, it's also really expensive. It's not for the budget-minded,
that's for sure. It threw our pricing for this review unit off. At
the time, we were only able to purchase the SSD drive for $1500. We're now
importing it directly and are getting a much better price on it. We're a big believer in this new technology and fully expect main storage drives to be fully solid state within the next year to two years on every high performance system. We've even added the 2.5" version of this drive to our laptops as an option. They are still more expensive by a few hundred dollars than a high performance, traditional hard drive. However, our customers want and deserve the best and the fastest.
As always, feel free to email me at [my first name] @ widowpc.com.
Joshua
Founder, WidowPC
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