Alienware Announces Quad-Graphics Desktop

[zippyjuan]

Your computer not big enough or powerful enough? Got lots of money hanging around? Want to impress your friends?
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/display/20080306120117_Alienware_Announces_Quad_Graphics_Desktop.html

Alienware Announces Quad-Graphics Desktop.
Thanks to ATI Catalyst 8.3

Category: Other

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 03/06/2008 | 12:01 PM ]


Well-known manufacturer of high-performance desktop, notebook and entertainment systems, Alienware Company, announced that their desktop systems equipped with four GPUs thanks to ATI CrossFireX technology are now available for ordering. The new Alienware ALX CrossFireX desktop computer utilizes two ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics cards, each housing two GPUs and a full 1GB of dedicated graphics memory – that’s 2GB of dedicated GDDR3 graphics memory.


AMD recently enabled CrossFireX (Triple- and Quad-CrossFire) technology in its latest Catalyst 8.3 drivers, and Alienware couldn’t help taking advantage of this opportunity. The company’s senior vice president, Brian Joyce, described the ALX CrossFireX as “our most sophisticated desktop system,” and said that “adding the awesome power of a quad graphics solution like CrossFireX to the ALX desktop is just one more way Alienware strives to deliver the world’s best PC gaming experience.”

Other features of the system include 45nm quad-core Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 processor overclocked to 4.0GHz frequency and 4GB of DDR3-1333 SDRAM. The system is built on an Intel X38 based mainboard. Area-51 ALX CFX desktop in the above described configuration is a little over $6000. Besides the above listed components, Alienware is ready to supply their system with two 64GB Solid State drives, however in this case you will have to pay extra $1250.

[johnnymk]

Wouldn't this also be a great candidate for programs like 3D AutoCad?

[Jeffbx]

Not really, since the hardware here is geared towards gaming rather than 3D business apps. The difference is that the big 3D companies - Autodesk, CATIA, Unigraphics, etc - only certify their products on the 'business' line of graphics cards, which are the ATI FireGL & nVidia Quadro lines.

You can buy the business equivalent of this machine at Dell - the Precision T7400.

[Markel]

I'll take 3!

[johnnymk]

Not really, since the hardware here is geared towards gaming rather than 3D business apps. The difference is that the big 3D companies - Autodesk, CATIA, Unigraphics, etc - only certify their products on the 'business' line of graphics cards, which are the ATI FireGL & nVidia Quadro lines.

You can buy the business equivalent of this machine at Dell - the Precision T7400.

So these programs can identify a certain make and model of graphics card and won't work unless they are the correct ones?

[Jeffbx]

The silly thing is that they'll probably work just fine, but if you have a problem you won't be able to get support from the software vendors.

The intentions are good - those apps are not able to run on a typical office machine, so there are 'certified' hardware platforms that must be used so when you spend your $5000 or whatever for the Autocad license, you want to make sure you have a machine that can run it.

The shady part is that they only certify the business cards & not any consumer/gaming cards - this is shady because the only difference between these cards is a driver, but they cost about twice as much as the same consumer card.

[nate el bueno]

I'll take 3!

cardboard box, here we come

[bachviet]

Consumer video cards should work fine with AutoCAD Inventor and Solidworks.