Falcon Northwest FragBox 2

Falcon Northwest, makers of obscene gaming and worskstation PCs, have produced the FragBox 2, a $6000 PC of graphics and power doom.  Packed with an Intel 7 Series (P4 Extreme Edition), 1 GB RAM, 600GB via twin 300GB hard drives, and an nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra, this just may be the current ultimate PC in terms of price and power.  Is it worth it, though?  Were you to buy it, about a thousand people would tell you that you that they could have built you a PC of similar specs for a fraction of the cost, but you wouldn't have the groovy lunch-box case.  Your call.

[christopher wanko @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

I swear, Pixar does better graphics rendering than any gamer clan, and you don't see Pixar running Wintels, do you?

It's funny, no gamer rigs I've seen lately have dual-CPU setups. Apparently the games can't take advantage of the extra CPU power... too bad. Also haven't seen any 4Gb rigs, and you'd think they'd be fully-stocked.

[Kent @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

Pixar doesn't do any rendering in realtime, it's a bit unfair to compare the two...

Quake 3 could utilise SMP, but that's the only major game I can think of. Maybe Doom 3 does. It's a catch 22 situation, why would you spend the time adding that ability when such a small minority could take advantage of it?

The other big name crazy-priced PC assemblers (Voodoo PC and Alienware) have recently just announced their $6k machines too - although both of those have 2 6800 Ultras, not just one like this little guy...

[Can @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

The main problem is that if you decided to build a similar system, you are bound to run into a lot of compatibility issues.

But I have to agree with christopher wanko, in the sense that, if you are claiming to build "ultimate gaming machines", you should ship them with at least 2GB RAM.

Also, I wonder if this thing has PCIExpress or not (I'm assuming it does..)

[Kent @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

Why would you run into compatibility issues? All they've done is chosen the parts they want and put together the system, just as you or I would. They haven't manufactured/designed anything, except possibly the case, but I bet even that comes from an OEM/ODM in Taiwan.

Are there any games that could use all 2 gigs of memory? If all current games aren't even filling 1 gig, then what difference would 2 make?

Just like - as cool as it would be - there's no need for a GFX card with 2 gigs of memory. Even Doom 3 at maximum everything fits into 512megs of video memory doesn't it?

[Stefan @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

Why did they use a Pentium 4 EE? (Extremely Expensive) when the AMD Ahtlon 64 FX55 blows away the Pentium in gameing performance and it even costs about $180 less. A fare better joice is the Shuttle SN95G5 (us.shuttle.com) wich costs about half of that Falcon Northwest system.

[Tony @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

It's pointless talking about what components Falcon Northwest chose to put inside their demo FragBox 2 for PC Magazine.

Unlike a Shuttle barebone, you are not tied to a proprietary motherboard and power supply that are not upgradable. If you want a GeForce 6800 ultra, P4EE, Athlon 64 FX (I was told they will be offering an AMD version soon) or whatever, you can have them build it into the FragBox 2. Even the power supply they used is standard ATX so if you think 520W isn't enough, you can upgrade that too.

[qq2005 @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

Falcon Northwest, makers of obscene gaming and worskstation PCs, have produced the FragBox 2, a $6000 PC of graphics and power doom. Packed with an Intel 7 Series (P4 Extreme Edition), 1 GB RAM, 600GB via twin 300GB hard drives, and an nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra, this just may be the current ultimate PC in terms of price and power. Is it worth it, though? Were you to buy it, about a thousand people would tell you that you that they could have built you a PC of similar specs for a fraction of the cost, but you wouldn�t have the groovy lunch-box case. Your call.
http://www.fedown.com