If you’re familiar with the Alienware X51, you know you’ve only had it available with Windows software out of the box until now – now you’ll find Ubuntu leading up the show. This machine brings on a rather small form factor you can use to replace your gaming console – if you dare – a possibility made even more real now that Valve’s Steam gaming interface works with Linux natively. You know good and well you’ve wanted to try it since that bit was announced.
Ubuntu is being pushed with this machine as an ideal environment for gamers of all kinds, specifically because of its low-weight abilities. You’ve got an extremely clean build with this operating system right out of the box, with only the basics loaded immediately – you choose what you want when you want it – you also get Ubuntu-specific interfaces through Ubuntu’s Software Center, with “thousands of free applications” at your fingertips.
Several builds are ready for gaming action with the Alienware X51 this week, the least expensive of these starting at a cool $599 USD. You’ll be able to ramp up to $1,049 with the largest of the collection – it’s still tiny, it’s just got a 3rd Gen Ivy Bridge Intel Core i7 processor under the hood instead of the smallest model’s Core i3. These systems also come with NVIDIA GeForce GTX graphics processing architecture for top-notch graphics delivery.
Have a peek at the Alienware X51 right this minute and consider Ubuntu for your next-generation gaming beast. Let us know if you’re planning on buying one of these builds now, and be sure to note if you’ll be jumping in with Ubuntu Linux or if you’ll stick with Windows for the foreseeable future.
The Falcon Northwest Tiki is a custom-built pre-constructed gaming PC that emphasizes both a radically small form factor and high performance processing power. We had the opportunity to take a peek at this system thanks to NVIDIA – inside this tiny tower is the newest most fantastic consumer-aimed graphics card on the market: the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN, the consumer product riding the wave of the impact the TITAN supercomputer. We’ll be continuing to explore the ins and outs of the TITAN over the coming year as products such as Project SHIELD become available – for now, this review of the Tiki should serve as a primer for those of you considering a TITAN of your own – and/or a full Falcon Northwest build, of course.
Hardware
The Tiki case is one that those unfamiliar with the intricacies of custom-made computers will easily overlook. It’s certainly not the flashy rainbow LED light show that some gaming PCs opt for – it’s almost as if the Tiki dares those that look at it to ask what the big deal is. Up close and personal, you’ll find that the Tiki boasts a fabulously simple set of aesthetics, a subtly lit Falcon Northwest logo up front, and a granite base.
The granite base we’ve got here is what the company calls “Absolute Black”. While you’ve got more than one color choice if you’d like to explore several shades, we’d certainly recommend the black if you’re working with the straight-up black case – together they’re quite classy. The whole unit is light enough that you’ll be able to transport it to and from LAN parties with ease (if that’s your sort of thing) and is perfectly well balanced due in a large part to the granite – it does its job well.
Getting inside the Tiki is just about as simple as it gets without working with magnets – here you’ll be undoing two thumbscrews and pushing one side off – you’ll want to be careful doing so only because the 120MM Asetek liquid cooler (550LC) is attached to it, tubes running from the casing to the main hunk of the unit. This setup works awesome for getting down into the guts of the machine as quick as possible – the fewer screws we’ve got to deal with for customization, the better.
Inside this setup you’ll find an ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe mini ITX motherboard shining out in all its bluey glory amid the massive monsters that are the high-end components that this amalgamation is made of. We’re working with a 256GB SSD SATA3 (Crucial M4 with M500 available soon from Falcon Northwest – check on that when you’re picking up your own) as well as a 3TB WD “Caviar Green” SATA3 hard drive for all the data storage you could ask for.
Getting inside to remove / replace / give big kisses to your favorite components is only a few screw turns away. While there are wires here or there glued down for the trip between Falcon Northwest’s test shop and your home, they’re easily popped off and apart when you decide you want to move forward with any new components.
The two big monsters inside this build are the 3rd Generation Intel Core i7 processor (overclocked to 3.5GHz), and the 6GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN graphics card. When you’re picking up the TITAN, you’re not looking for a budget setup. You’ve got a beast right out of the box. Again, this isn’t the last time we’ll be working with NVIDIA’s TITAN GPU for video game reviews and cloud gaming action – stick around our NVIDIA tag portal as well as our NVIDIA Tegra hub for the full fireworks through the future.
Once you’re done rummaging around the insides, you’ll find more inputs and outputs than you’ll ever have a need for. The build we’ve got here works with a Sony Optiarc slot load DVD+-RW on top near a a headphone jack, microphone jack, and set of two USB 3.0 ports. You’ll also see a symmetrical set of vents that, when you peek through, you’ll be able to see the side of the TITAN: “GEFORCE GTX” in bright NVIDIA green lights just below the surface – only visible up close.
The back of this machine has its IO panel labels set in upside-down for easy reading whilst looking down over the top – as you’re prone to do with such a desktop. That massive set of connections includes two eSATA ports, four USB 3.0 ports, and four USB 2.0 ports. You’ll also find GigE, ASUS Wifi connections (you’ll get two external antenna in your package from Falcon Northwest), and standard optical and analog audio jacks. Ethernet and processor-powered display outputs DVI, HDMI, and Display Port are also down there if you want to make use of them.
Nearer the top you’ve got two DL-DVI ports as well as HDMI and DisplayPort outputs bringing the heat via your GeForce TITAN GPU. Your power supply (Silverstone ST-45B 450W) sits nearest the bottom on the back. On either side of the case you’ll more airflow action allowing this Tiki setup to remain impressively cool no matter what we throw at it. With that you’ll still be hearing next no noise – you’ll certainly not be having to dismiss a “hum” while you’re enjoying the greatness of the highest powered games on the market – those being the games you’re essentially obligated to test out and work with when you’re rolling with Tiki.
Software and Performance
Under the hood out of the box we’re working with 64bit Windows 8 Professional, and though it’s still a little odd working with this operating system without a touchscreen interface, it’s certainly starting to feel more natural than it did when Microsoft first pushed the system to consumers. That said, the real power here comes from the software we’re using outside the standard Microsoft experience: games, games, and more games. And with a system this size, big-time possibilities!
Steam Big Picture Mode
The size of this system suggests some rather unique use-cases, even before we consider the fact that NVIDIA has some big plans for GeForce and cloud computing in the home this year. The Tiki case isn’t much larger than the average major-label gaming console today, and even compared to what’s coming out later this year (more than likely), you can be confident you’ll have a size-to-power ratio that blows any gaming console out of the water. And unless the Xbox 720 or PlayStation 4 pull some real magic out of their sleeves with regards to digital game distribution soon, Valve’s Steam will continue to be the premiere destination for the universe’s greatest downloadable games.
NVIDIA GeForce Experience
NVIDIA has made some rather interesting strides recently in making sure the average citizen is able to have a top-notch gaming experience. Just this year the GeForce Experience was released – an NVIDIA-powered app interface where a collection of the world’s most fabulous games can have their settings optimized for your unique gaming hardware setup instantly and automatically. NVIDIA has released a new GeForce driver software update for esentially every major game delivered in the first quarter of 2013, each of them able to be accessed via this GeForce Experience with a single button click, a unique game settings interface appearing for you then if you’ve got said game on your computer.
System – System manufacturer System Product Name
Manufacturer
Falcon Northwest
Product Type
Desktop
Operating System
Microsoft Windows 8 Pro (64-bit)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. P8Z77-I DELUXE
Processor
Intel Core i7-3770K
Processor ID
GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 58 Stepping 9
Processor Frequency
3.50 GHz
Processors
1
Threads
8
Cores
4
L1 Instruction Cache
32.0 KB
L1 Data Cache
32.0 KB
L2 Cache
256 KB
L3 Cache
8.00 MB
Memory
8.00 GB DDR3 SDRAM 934MHz
FSB
100.0 MHz
BIOS
American Megatrends Inc. 0607
With the automatic settings optimization feature, your games will become as excellent as they possibly can be – both aesthetically and performance-wise. With the Tiki rolling with a GeForce GTX TITAN under the hood and NVIDIA optimizing settings game-to-game, we’ve had nothing but the best gaming experiences we’ve ever seen on a gaming computer.
Benchmark Score – System manufacturer System Product Name
Section
Description
Score
Total Score
Windows x86 (64-bit) – Microsoft Windows 8 Pro (64-bit)
Integer
Processor integer performance
16175
18728
Floating Point
Processor floating point performance
28310
Memory
Memory performance
10590
Stream
Memory bandwidth performance
10411
Right this minute we’ve done just our standard fare as far as benchmarks go, Geekbench showing this build to be amongst the most powerful gaming PCs we’ve reviewed. Also be sure to check out similar results on much larger machines, too: AVADirect Quiet Gaming PC and NEEDLETAIL SX – and have a peek at a couple relatively small machines so you know what the Tiki is up against physical size-wise: MainGear Potenza and iBuyPower Revolt.
Whilst playing Batman: Arkham City, we’ve experienced a been a bit of a re-birth of interest with the much higher-definition display than we used when originally reviewing the game, not to mention a system that’s on a whole different level than the Alienware notebook (pre 3rd-gen Intel Core processors and so-forth). While it’s not that working with a beast like the MX-17 from a couple years ago is a bad thing (it’s actually still quite amazing), there’s just no comparing to the smoothness and detail we’re getting here.
In Hawken the only thing that stops one from having the miraculous non-stop smoothness we’re seeing in Arkham City is the fact that part of our experience is based online. If we’d be working with the connections our friends in Japan have with wires so thick you could drive a truck through them, we’d be golden – here we’ll have to settle for just “destroys all gaming experiences we’ve had before this year.” Have a peek at our first look at Hawken while you’re at it.
Even Star Wars: The Old Republic looks great. As it’s included in NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience list of games that can be optimized for greatness automatically, we certainly had to give it a go. As it turns out, the difference between what you get in this game on a basic level and what NVIDIA can give you is immense. While the gameplay remains the same – you’re still firing blasters at your opponents and rolling in the Force like mad – you can take part in the deepest visual details the developers intended you to see. Just look at that water ripple!
We’ll be continuing to benchmark the build we’ve got here through the future, so be sure to ask if you’ve got any tests you’d like us to run. We’ll be putting this setup through the punches in any and all ways you desire!
Wrap-Up
The Falcon Northwest Tiki is not a machine made for penny-pinchers. If you’re planning on working with any gaming PC packing an NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN GPU, you’re going to be paying quite a chunk of change – this isn’t the sort of situation where you’re paying just a little bit of cash for a just-good-enough helping of performance. Instead you’re going to want to save up for a couple months – the build we’ve gotten from Falcon Northwest here will cost you more than $3k.
You can make your Tiki cost quite a bit less if you don’t want to pack it full of the top-of-the-line components we’ve got here – and you’ll still have an amazing build – but that’s not what NVIDIA’s TITAN brand is about. With the Falcon Northwest Tiki packing NVIDIA’s TITAN, you’ve got a gaming masterpiece, plain and simple.
With the release of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan GPU this year, we knew NVIDIA wasn’t going to pull any punches when it came to offering the highest-powered hardware to the public at any cost. Here with the reveal of the GeForce 700M family, the battle continues with notebook warriors galore. You’ll be seeing the NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M, 745M, 740M, 735M, and 720M coming your way soon – get pumped up about laptop graphics monstrousness!
Inside each of these bits of architecture you’ve got the graphics power to take your notebook to the next level. With the GeForce GT 750M, 745M, and 740M, NVIDIA will be aiming for a higher performance segment – not your everyday laptop machine, that is. The two smaller bits, the GeForce GT 735M, and 720M, will be heading to high-powered gaming notebooks this year.
Each of these GPUs is based on Kepler and works with NVIDIA Optimus technology so if you’re all about both next-generation power and long life in batteries, you’ll be set. You’ll have GPU Boost 2.0 technology and all the most fabulous NVIDIA innovations to roll with as well. Have a peek at the GeForce Experience to see what you’ll be working with in the near future on a GeForce-packing notebook near you.
“Every leading notebook manufacturer will be introducing notebooks with GPU Boost 2.0 technology, including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba.” – NVIDIA
Also meanwhile have a peek at our NVIDIA GeForce tag portal and our Tegra hub to see how the desktop and mobile gaming universes will be converging more and more as the year goes on. We’ll be rolling out with high powered hand-held adventures sooner than you think!
By NVIDIA’s own admission, the lower registers of its Kepler-based GeForce graphics cards “couldn’t always tackle [their] originally stated goal” of powering 1080p games with the settings amped up to high. So, after the GeForce GTX 650 and 650 Ti, maybe the third time’s a charm. The latest card goes by the name GTX 650 Ti Boost, reflecting the fact that it brings NVIDIA’s GPU Boost technology into the mix, which can vary the chip’s clock speed as need allows. Stacked against the 650 Ti, this unit’s got 782 CUDA cores (up from 768), a base clock of 980MHz (up from 928MHz) and a TDP of 140W, (compared to 110W). Another big draw is two-way SLI, so you can pair up cards when your wallet regains its strength. On the benchmark front, NVIDIA promises you can run Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm at highest settings and get a frame rate of 62fps, an order of magnitude higher than the 39fps promised on the 650 Ti. Sitting above the 650 Ti and below the GeForce 660, the 1GB version will set you back $149 (£124), with the 2GB edition priced at $169 (£144). In behind-closed-doors tests, the company has found that it comes out on top against AMD’s $249 Radeon 7850, but we’ll be rounding up independent reviews shortly in order to verify that claim — as well as seeing if it can make the 7790 think twice about getting out of bed.
Should you happen to be playing the widely applauded BioShock Infinite game this week with a machine with the graphics power of NVIDIA’s GeForce under the hood, you’ll also find game-optimized drivers available to you for download. These drivers have ben sent out to the public along with notes about how they’ll destroy your concept of what looks best graphics-wise. If you thought this game looked great before, you’re in for a real trip.
NVIDIA is notorious for being up-to-date with the newest biggest baddest games on the market, releasing software for the graphics cards they’ve got out in the wild so that you can have the best experience you could possibly hope for. What we’re seeing with the NVIDIA GeForce family of GPUs here in 2013 is a big drive for NVIDIA-pushed optimization, especially with services such as the GeForce Experience. At the moment we’re seeing NVIDIA release a massive amount of information on this release specifically, showing the undeniable power of optimization on a variety of systems.
What you’re seeing here is the game being tested on four different resolutions and setups, each of them running on Rampage IV Extreme, i7-3960X clocked at 3.3GHz with 8GB of RAM under the hood. It should be mighty clear that you’ll want to update your drivers to GeForce 314.22 WHQL as quick as possible, even on GPUs not listed here.
NVIDIA has also shown the difference in performance for such games as the new Tomb Raider. You’ll find here that the change is just as impressive, changing the frames per second by levels of 10 with ease. These games are two in a collection of games the team has tested and optimized, with this particular driver update hitting the following:
In addition to the BioShock Infinite and Tomb Raider optimizations, 314.22 WHQL also includes performance improvements for Batman: Arkham City, Battlefield 3, Borderlands 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Civilization V, Sleeping Dogs, Sniper Elite V2, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
Good deal! You’ll find this update available to you today in an over-the-air update – automatic! You can also go ahead and download the GeForce Experience for your machine to get the update with a click of a button – make it happen! These drivers can also be downloaded at the GeForce Homepage where all great driver downloads are housed.
Earlier today, we saw NVIDIA present Volta, it’s next-generation GPU architecture that is designed to increase performance by addressing one of the “eternal” problems linked to GPUs more than any other processor type: memory bandwidth. Volta is going to use RAM that is layered on top of the GPU silicon to reduce energy consumption and latency during memory accesses. With this, NVIDIA says that it will be able to push 1 Terabytes of data per second through the chip. This is 5X superior to the GeForce Titan, which tops 192GB/s. (more…)
This week as we roll through NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference and hear of the latest innovations in graphics processing prowess, we’ve heard a thunder strike – the Digital Storm Hailstorm II, a massive monster of a gaming PC. This beast has four distinct levels of excellence, ranging from a single GeForce GTX 680 all the way up to three – count them – three NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN GPUs for face-blasting graphics processing excellence. This set of builds is bordering on absolutely insane as the home gaming universe ramps up to a place where you’d have to be no less than tattooed with dedication to having the most powerful set of specifications – here you’ll go wild!
With the Hailstorm II you’ll have space for four radiators, four GPU units, and two CPUs. That’s one massive amount of space on its own – then you consider how it’ll all be blasting forth with the components Digital Storm is quoting here as out-of-box builds, you’ll find your fingers sweating. With the Hailstorm II, you’ve got the first appearance of the Corsair Obsidian Series 900D, a monstrous black tower with a big window on the side so you can view this futuristic wallet-crushing collection for yourself.
Inside you’ve got a liquid cooling system with three front intake fans and a lovely large rear exhaust fan to keep the air running through. If you’d like, this build allows you to ad an absurd 15 fans in total – so much freaking airflow you’ll have to wear a jacket.
Up front you’ll find a lovely brushed aluminum front panel that’ll open up to show you a vast number of expansion slots – ten expansion slots in all, with room for up to nine hard drives or SSD with three hot-swappable mounts, four 5.25-inch optical drive bays, and more! You’ll have two USB 3.0 ports for super quick transfer, four USB 2.0 ports for all your peripherals, and, just incase you’re an over-the-top expander, the ability to work with two power supplies on the back.
If that weren’t enough, you’ll find that each unit has gone through a 72-hour stress-test by Digital Storm, this including industry standard testing of the hardware and software as well as a proprietary testing process in place to detect any and all components that show the potential to fail in the future – you’ll be set!
The system builds you’ll be working with are as you see above, each of the prices reflective of the beastly innards they contain. You’ll find that each of these systems uses fabulous Intel CPU power with the Core i7 across the board as well as NVIDIA GPUs. As noted, this is one of the first systems to work with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN GPU, and you’ll be able to knock it up to 3x SLI NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN at 6GB – intense!
This week the folks at NVIDIA have been revealing bits and pieces of their GPU roadmap with Tegra and GeForce GPU action left and right, moving forward with their newest mobile superhero code-named SoC “Parker.” This SoC comes after the still code-named “Logan” and will, if the naming scheme holds true, be Tegra 6 down the road. Along with this reveal came word of a code-named system called “Kayla” – a processing beast that, when it’s ready for action, will be extra-tiny and extra-powerful beyond anything we’re capable of today.
Parker is the newest in a line of code-named Tegra processors, coming after Wayne (Tegra 4) and Logan (Tegra 5, more than likely), and bringing on the innovations of past generations and/or outdoing them with the following firsts:
• First with Denver CPU. • First 64 bit ARM processor coupled with NVIDIA’s next-gen Maxwell GPU. • First to use FinFET transistors.
According to NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, this is only the beginning. Huang noted that “In five years time, we’ll increase Tegra by 100 times, though Moore’s Law would suggest an eight-fold increase.” With Logan we’ll see the first mobile processor on the planet to work with CUDA. This processor will also bring Kepler GPU power and OpenGL 4.3 – and it’ll be in production by early 2014.
Parker, on the other hand, is still in the pipeline. While we may see it out by 2015, we can’t be sure until NVIDIA gives the real word.
Then there’s Kayla. With NVIDIA’s Kayla, we’ve got what’s been described by Huang as “Logan’s girlfriend.” This device is around the size of a tablet PC at the moment, and is beastly enough already to run real-time ray tracing. As Huang said, “this is showing the kind of demos we used to do on massive GPUs.”
Inside Kayla you’ll find CUDA 5, Linux, and PhysX processing. All of this runs on a rather tiny ARM-toting computer – and it’s coming sooner than later. Have a peek at the timeline below for more Tegra and GeForce GTX action from NVIDIA as GTC 2013 continues – hit up our tag portal for more action as well, we’ll be here the whole conference long!
And don’t forget to check our massive Tegra hub for more mobile processing action than you can handle – more big blasts coming up quick!
This week at NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang spoke about the ever-growing GPU-utilizing universe, in both the mobile and desktop computer global environments. According to Huang, there will be more than 400 sessions at GTC. “This is the Mecca for scientific discovery”, said Huang of GTC 2013, “Nothing’s more important than the research being done on GPU computers.”
Huang ran through massive amounts of GPU-friendly happenings and upcoming events, including bits and pieces like the following:
• A 50 Gigapixel Camera being developed at the U of Arizona. • GPU-accelerated diamond cutting. • CUDA utilization for dating site matching compatibility. • Oak Ridge’s Titan Supercomputing using 40 million CUDA processors together for 10 petaflops of power. • Swiss Supercomputing Center starting construction on Europe’s fastest GPU Supercomputing Center Piz Dant – made for weather forecasting purposes.
According to Huang, GPU supercomputing is taking hold at an undeniably quick rate.
“If we’re not at the tipping point for GPU Computing, we’re racing at it. There’s a huge spike in GPU-based computers being built for real work – about 20 percent of total Top500 horsepower is GPU. Included in this is the world’s most powerful supercomputer, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Titan supercomputer.” – Huang
Read more about Titan in our most recent update on the machine and know this – SlashGear’s experience with the GeForce GTX home-ready GPU is coming up quick, too – stay tuned! Of course you’ll also want to stick out the full conference with us here on SlashGear as we cover the entirety of the show, front to back. Have a look at our GTC 2013 tag for more information and stay tuned for more amazing rendering beastliness!
Jen-Hsun Huang stepped on stage this week at GTC 2013 with words on the GPU, the graphics processing engine that NVIDIA uses to push the envelope in many, many more ways than one. Five features were announced as coming on through the conference: breakthroughs in computer graphics, updates on development, a roadmap update for NVIDIA, an update on remote graphics, and a brand new product announcement. While we’re expecting this conference to hold quite a bit of news on computing outside the mobile world with Tegra, there’s certainly going to be some amazing Android-based excellence coming on too.
Wave Works
Beginning this show with TITAN – the GeForce GTX GPU we’re about to have hands-on time with in the very near future here on SlashGear – some interactive ocean experimentation was shown. Straight away we saw a ship shown on a large screen, real-time water being pushed up against the craft as heavy waves came up and crashed against it. With 20,000 sensors in-place (virtually), this demonstration showed how with NVIDIA GPU power, we’ll be able to test the ability of ships in the future to withstand a beat-down.
If we didn’t know better, we’d have to guess that this demonstration of the ship was real – this demonstration was called Wave Works, and was a Beaufort-Scale Real-Time Ocean rendering. Absolutely gorgeous.
Face Works
Also included was a show of what the company calls Kepler Dawn. This lovely fairy was the work of many, many years of work on the creation of a very real human form. Attempting to escape the so-called “Uncanny Valley”, Huang let us know that they were close, but weren’t quite there yet with this first show. The “Uncanny Valley” is a place where realistic animations get creepy – incase you didn’t know – this happening between an obviously animated creature and a real human being.
A new technology called Face Works was introduced, letting a system that before NVIDIA got to it was 32GB to be pushed into 400 MB. Here we’ve seen NVIDIA’s Titan GPU turning an animated face look real. For those of you that aren’t able to see this face move in real-time yet, hear this: it’s impossibly realistic. If Star Wars is going to feature Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hammil, they’ll use Face Works to make it work.
Stick out the full conference with us here on SlashGear as we cover the entirety of the show, front to back. Have a look at our GTC 2013 tag portal for more information and stay tuned for more amazing rendering beastliness!
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
