Review: Monarch Computer's Nemesis FX-57 7800 SLI Gaming

A couple weeks back now, I had the pleasure of testing and using Monarch Computer's Nemesis FX-57 8700 SLI Gaming machine. This model is a top-of-the-line gaming rig; I'm currently testing the Hornet machine as well. Read below for my take on the machine.

One of the first things that should be acknowledged is that this version of the Nemesis is a very high end gaming machine. The price for the system that I had been testing was over $5000. There's the scary-fast base system itself, but then you throw on full THX surround sound, the customzied keyboard and mouse that Monarch produces - and while you are talking about top-dollar, you are also talking about top performance.

The system itself is as below:

Case: Thermaltake Custom Painted Shark Full Tower Aluminum Case Series w/Window (Fire Pearl)
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Power Supply: Enermax Noisetaker EG701AX-VE-SFMA ATX 2.0 w/SLI Support 600W Power Supply

Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI Premium nForce4 SLI Audio, GB-LAN, IEEE, USB, PCI-E, SATAII w/RAID, DDR-400, ATX
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Processors: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (939)
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Heat Sink: Zalman CNPS7000-CU Copper CPU Fan

Memory: 2 GB (4 pcs 512MB) DDR (400) PC-3200 Corsair w/LED Display (TWINX1024-3200XLPRO)

Hard Drives: 1 x Western Digital 74 GB SATA 10K Raptor (WD740GD), 2 x Western Digital Caviar SE 250 GB SATAII 16MB Cache 7200 RPM (WD2500KS)

RAID Setup: RAID 0 (Zero) Setup

DVD-RW: Plextor PX-716SA DVD±RW 16x8x16x DVD+RW 48x24x48x CD-RW SATA

Floppy: Mitsumi Floppy 7-in-1 USB Card Reader/Smart Media Drive (Black)

Video Cards: 2 x NVIDIA Geforce 7800 GTX 256MB GDDR3, VIVO/, Dual-DVI

Sound Card: Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Platinum INT Drive Sound

Wireless NIC: D-Link DWL-AG530 Tri-Mode Dualband (2.4/5GHz) Wireless 108Mbps PCI Adapter

Industry Standard Upgradable

USB Ports on front of case

6 Month Warranty - Free tech support
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All Monarch PCs include: 48-72 hr. Burn-in Diagnostic (to ensure all components are malfunction free); Latest BIOS, drivers, and tested patches installed (All drivers are also included on CD); award-winning assembly and installation including tie-off on all cables (for improved airflow); final 62-point inspection by Intel and AMD Certified Technicians, and Free Unlimited Phone Support. All manuals, disks, cables and other accessories included with your retail components will be included with your system.

As is fairly obvious, the machine's specs are pretty hardcore. In doing some of the standard testing, the system turned out a 3DMark05 test of 13,002 whichout missing a beat. Similarly, the Sysmark04 score was a studly 225. To be blunt, I don't think I've ever seen those types of numbers before - in real life, that is.

What was even more impressive for me at least was the machine's ability to handle that most important of tasks - playing games. Playing Doom 3, with all graphic options cranked (including the console accessible ones) this machine still turned out a 80.2 FPS. Turning off the console options, and just going in ultra-mode had a frame rate of 87.3, sustained. My other gaming obessions, World of Warcraft (Props to Ajul-Nerub server!) managed to turn in a more paltry 77.3 FPS, but given the fact that you are often depending on your connection with WoW for some of that, that's pretty amazing. DivX encoding was also quite fast - 1574 seconds on the sample size that I used.

The more subtle touch on the machine was evident as well - you can open the thing up from multiple angles, with a swing front door on it, and the lighting was handled nicely. And given the machine's power and draw, I was fairly impressed with the noise from the various fans. The heat output from the machine is fairly impressive; you'll not need that space heater in the room anymore in the winter time, but the actual heat inside of the machine case, and CPU always stayed well within manufacturer recommended ranges. While running the very high-end graphic testing of Doom 3, the temp did get some spikes, but nothing that was concerning. The nVidia 7800 duals make a huge difference.

One of the other features that I liked is the fast primary drive, and back-up, slower, but RAIDed drives. It's nice for installing high access demand apps on the primary, but using the other drives as storage drives. The other comment I would make, speaking as an obessive wire organizer, is that the machine itself ships very very nicely tied off cabling-wise. I think this looks nice, but also, I would suspect, makes a appreciable difference to the heat flow. One other important note is that they offer a 3 year 24/7 support plan - all warranties are different options, 'course.

In short, the machines rocks. The issue, of course, is the pricing - but if you are looking for a top end machine, this is a phenomenal rig. Monarch does a great job of supporting the product, with a great packet of documentation and information that comes with the machine, but also active forum postings and involvement from the tech support on their boards. Great company, great machine.

The Bare Minimum

[ackthpt]

[x] Memory: 2 GB [Check]
[x] Processors: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (939) [Check]
[x] Hard Drives: 1 x 74 GB SATA, 2 x 250 GB SATAII
[x] Video Cards: 2 x NVIDIA Geforce 7800 GTX 256MB

This extreme gaming platform should meet the minimum requirements to play Solitare under Windows Vista. [slashdot.org] For those planning on gaming on Vista, how much more muscle can you pack into this rig?

The price for the system that I had been testing was over $5000.

Ah, part of the TCO equation! But, heck, you should be able to buy this system for $3000 a year from now. Funny how this pricing reminds me of what it cost to have 1 PC XT with MS-DOS on it back in the mid-eighties.

Re:The Bare Minimum

[kollivier]

Ah, part of the TCO equation! But, heck, you should be able to buy this system for $3000 a year from now. Funny how this pricing reminds me of what it cost to have 1 PC XT with MS-DOS on it back in the mid-eighties.

I can't see anyone truly concerned about money buying this box. I like games as much as the next guy (or gal), but I don't have $5000 to drop just to get a 'more hardcore rig', and I don't even see why I would need one. I mean, think about it - does a game really need to push your hardware to the very limit in order to be fun? Of course not. Game developers try to push the hardware just to see what they can do, and gamers buy these systems just to show off what their 'hardcore rig' can do. This is like a Porche for geeks. Well, actually, probably more like a heavily modded monster truck. ;) You don't buy it so much because you need what it does, you buy it because you want to show everyone else what it can do.

I bet the Revolution is going to blow these boxes away in terms of fun-factor anyways, and it's probably going to be under $300. How's that for ROI? :)

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:The Bare Minimum

[MindStalker]

Yea its more like buying an expensive car that runs some strange exotic fuel just so you can try out this new fuel. Luckily the car will still run the old fuel, though it may crash doing it :)

Re:The Bare Minimum

[bigman2003]

Hmm...what is more fun- sex toys or office equipment?

Re:The Bare Minimum -- Cost to Enthusiasts?

[ackthpt]

"Ah, part of the TCO equation! But, heck, you should be able to buy this system for $3000 a year from now. Funny how this pricing reminds me of what it cost to have 1 PC XT with MS-DOS on it back in the mid-eighties."

Computing for enthusiats has never been cheap ;)

Who said anything about enthusiasts? I'm actually puzzled the moderations are leaning towards funny, because I really was trying to make a non-humourous point. It's perhaps funny-ironic, the ultimate system will hardly be the minimum for the next OS release from the vender most people get their work/entertainment environment from.

That mid-eighties box, which cost about $3,000 was about a mid to high end model, it had a faster clock, 20 MB HD and a Hercules video card. It was the bare minimum to do work, most of which was running a terminal emulator, but the rest was some work in Turbo C

You can buy a very capable system for $300 at Fry's right now. There's a large gulf between capable for today's OS releases and the one coming out in a year. The big question is, how many suckers are going to bite?

Re:The Bare Minimum -- Cost to Enthusiasts?

[Nutria]

You can buy a very capable system for $300 at Fry's right now. There's a large gulf between capable for today's OS releases and the one coming out in a year.

That is so right.

These 3yo specs are still more than sufficient for the vast majority of people, including (non-teenage boy) gamers:

• Athlon XP 2200+
• 1GB RAM
• GeForce 5200
• On-board audio or a cheap SoundBlaster
• GNOME 2.10

Purposefully no mention of disk space, because that need is always growing.

My favortie board

[AKAImBatman]

Base Price: $4,589.00

Holy CRAP that's expensive! And that's (apparently) without the monitor! If I may suggest, you should be able to build the same machine [mwave.com] for about half the price, perhaps a bit more.

Asus A8N-SLI Premium nForce4

Sweet! They chose my favorite board! [blogspot.com] I have the A8N-E board (same thing, but only one Vid card) and I must say that it is a VERY nice board. Practically everything you could ever want is built in. NForce4 chipset, Gigabit ethernet, PCI Express, 8 channel audio, 10 USB ports, hardware firewall, hardware RAID support, 4 SATA-300 (aka SATA-II) connectors, IDE support, nearly all AMD64 chips supported, etc. I haven't found a better board, especially in that price range!

Sound Card: Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Platinum INT Drive Sound

Can anyone explain what is up with this? The board comes with 8 channel sound [64.233.167.104] built in. What do you need a separate sound card for? Is the sound quality really that much better?

BTW, if you get the A8N board, don't get the ASUS Star ICE [viperlair.com]. I've got one of those things and I'm now using it as a desk ornament. I just wanted an extra fan to keep things cool. I had no idea that I'd get a friggin' JET ENGINE! (I'm not kidding either. This thing can barely fit in the case when installed.) It gets great comments from my coworkers though. "What the HELL is that!?" ;-)

If you don't believe me on its size (no one ever does) just look at this pic [viperlair.com].

Re:My favortie board

[Gulthek]

Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Platinum INT Drive Sound

Because it makes their copy sound cooler, thus increasing the price they can overcharge.

Re:There's Nothing Cool about Creative

[justforaday]

As a musician, I can say Creative is still the standard in audio quality for PCs.

You can stop right there. If you're using 1/8" miniplugs for any serious audio work, you clearly don't know what you're talking about...

Re:There's Nothing Cool about Creative

[HazE_nMe]

My friend's Audigy 2 ZS Platinum has more than just a slew of 1/8" miniplugs on the front bay.
Headphone Out (1/4" Stereo Jack)
Line In 1 (1/4" Stereo Jack , shared with Microphone In with Gain Control)
Line In 2 (1/4" Stereo Jack)
Line In 3 (2x RCA Jack)
Optical SPDIF In/Out
Coaxial SPDIF In/Out
Digital Out for 5.1 support (6-channel SPDIF Output to Creative digital speakers)
MIDI In / Out
With the ASIO 2.0 drivers for low latency (as low as 2ms) multi-track playback and recording at 16-bit

Re:There's Nothing Cool about Creative

[justforaday]

I am well aware that there have been breakout boxes for a few of the highend Creative cards which can give you decent results. However, his statement was implying that Creative is the standard for musicians recording on PCs, which it very simply is not.

Re:There's Nothing Cool about Creative

[Malor]

All of the SBLive and Audigy cards do an internal resample from 44.1Khz to 48khz. If you're listening on good gear, this really screws the sound up. Unless you can stay at 48khz from source to delivery, you DO NOT want to route sound through an Audigy if you really care about the quality.

The Audiotrak Prodigy and M-Audio Revolution 7.1 are both solid cards, with better DACs than the Audigy has, and they don't do the 48khz butchering. If you drive them with ASIO or kernel streaming, you can get true lossl

Re:There's Nothing Cool about Creative

[AKAImBatman]

Ironically, I would argue around the original Sound Blaster days the creative product was not the best,

Indeed. Turtle Beach was where it was at for serious musical work. IIRC, they were the first ones to add wavetable synthesis to their cards for serious MIDI work.

The only reason why everyone used Creative Sound Blasters were:

1. They were cheap
2. They could do digital effects in addition to FM synthesis (a step up from Adlib)
3. They were the "standard" used by all video games. Good luck getting Apogee share

Re:My favortie board

[Sduic]

Integrated sound is going to require more CPU time. If you can offload it to a card, you can leave the processor for more important things.

Re:My favortie board

[AKAImBatman]

I thought that's what the built-in RealTek ALC850 [realtek.com.tw] chip was supposed to do?

Speaking of which, DO NOT install the nForce drivers under Linux! They are WAY out of date and will just screw stuff up. Just get the latest version of non-Kernel ALSA and you should be fine. The ethernet is already supported.

The GeForce drivers should work without a hitch, though.

Re:My favortie board

[Malc]

Unfortunately this is a Creative Labs product so the CPU gained is going to be lost processing other things unnecessarily installed on the system. Based on my experience of their drivers and software over the years, the whole system will also be more unstable.

Re:My favortie board

[EzInKy]

Unfortunately this is a Creative Labs product so the CPU gained is going to be lost processing other things unnecessarily installed on the system. Based on my experience of their drivers and software over the years, the whole system will also be more unstable.


I've never really had any problems with the emu10k1 drivers, they just pretty much seem to work. It's been especially nice now that they are part of the kernel and installing alsa-libs and alsa-utils have never caused my sytem to be unstable. What kind

Re:My favortie board

[EzInKy]

I'm sure he meant on windows. Nothing wrong with the hardware, and alsa is swell for linux, but on windows creaf installs a TON of misc addons and about 4 different mixers and auto updaters and sound editor demos and all sorts of other crap that invariably has a negative effect on system stability.


Thanks, I really didn't know that. Seems like such a stupid thing to go and piss off people who have already bought your product instead of just making sure it does what it is supposed to do so they and their frie

Re:My favortie board

[iainl]

One of the guys at work brought his in because he didn't want it any more (replaced it with something smaller that still did the job). It's huge, but more importantly to me it weighs an absolute ton! There's no way I'd want something that heavy hanging on to the motherboard like that; I'd be too worried about it stressing the material to damaging point.

In fact, it's so heavy I'd be worried about the damage it could do to all the AGP and PCI cards on the way down as it broke off, too.

Re:My favortie board

[ALpaca2500]

the real answer to why it has an Audigy 2 ZS is that the audigy supports EAX 4, which a lot of games use for positional audio, to take the strain off the CPU and boost performance.

Re:My favortie board

[Surt]

The sound quality is probably pretty much the same, except for THX enabled titles, for which I doubt the onboard sound is certified. But the real difference will be in cpu usage, where the onboard sound you have probably eats 5% of your cpu, and the audigy 2 will use close to zero. It's not a completely worthless investment if you are obsessed with your gaming benchmarks.

Re:My favortie board

[the unbeliever]

Anyone serious about either audio or gaming adds a dedicated sound card. And a good one (ie. audigy2 or better). Your onboard 8-channel sound is a minimal solution, and offers very little hardware acceleration, making it subpar for gaming. (What gamer wants 5-10% of the cpu's attention to be stuck on doing audio, when a good sound blaster can drop that to 0-3%) Also of consideration is audio quality; as a basic rule-of-thumb, onboard audio is going to be built using lower quality DAC's and other components.

Re:My favortie board

[lidocaineus]

You're kidding about the CPU usage right? Creative is NOTORIOUS for grabbing more and more CPU with driver releases. And do you even know what's on an nForce4 chipset? Look very carefully - it has certain features that Creative will NEVER add *cough* Dolby Digital *cough*. And an Audigy2? Please. An Audigy is practically the same thing and dirt cheap (if you're going to the heinous Creative route). And finally, S/N ratio?!? Hahaha, it's a COMPUTER built for GAMES. The S/N ratio becomes so pointless

Re:My favortie board

[wernercd]

I hate to point out the obvious but I would wager that the average /.er does build his/her own systems...

your preachin too the choir

One more Slashdvertisement

[MyTwoCentsWorth]

I hope it pays for the hosting costs... or the editor's training :)

Re:One more Slashdvertisement

[h4rm0ny]

It's a really bad idea to book a slashdertisement for two reasons. Firstly, no-one will really read the article, they'll just skip to the comments to have the people who pretend to have read it summarize it for them. Secondly the most vocal people in the comments section will be those who have been pissed off by the company / product / service and see an opportunity to finally have their revenge.

Still, it's a business model I suppose. :)

Monarch

[AlienSexist]

I've bought Monarch computers before, usually on the value-end for simple workstations. They held up fairly well. But there was always some small problem like a CD burner never worked on a new system, or the CPU fan would die and nuke the CPU. I'm sure they love you plugging their products on such a major website. Did you disclose if you work for them or not?

Re:Monarch

[Dare nMc]

> All Monarch PCs include: 48-72 hr. Burn-in Diagnostic Latest BIOS, drivers, and tested patches installed (All drivers are also included on CD); award-winning assembly and installation including tie-off on all cables

I wonder what they do for burn in?
My experience is the same as yours with monarch, neither the system, or the complete board (MB+CPU+DDR+fan) I got worked right at first, and took 3 returns of the system, for them to get it so it could even boot a linux install cd (apperently was bad memory

Re:Monarch

[ChrisF79]

I've bought Monarch computers before, usually on the value-end for simple workstations. They held up fairly well. But there was always some small problem like a CD burner never worked on a new system, or the CPU fan would die and nuke the CPU. I'm sure they love you plugging their products on such a major website. Did you disclose if you work for them or not?

But there's a 62 point inspection as the article claims. Perhaps the CD burner is check #63 and the CPU fan is check #64. Better add two more chec

Re:Monarch

[KavyBoy]

My Monarch system took an addition month for tech support to fix. Anything stressing the GPU would cause an instant lockup. I had to update all the firmware myself - it was months out of date. So much for the updates and burn-in. I really wished I had just put it together myself from Newegg. It would have been faster and the returns, if any, would have been easier.

Fine but...

[DaPoulpe]

how much power this baby needs ?
Does it come along with it's small nuclear power plant ?

this just in...

[Anonymous Coward]

This just in: a computer built with the highest end components yields the highest end performance.

This was the most blatant advertisement as an "article" that I have ever seen. Too bad Monarch's servers can't handle the load; it makes the advertisement far less effective.

RAID-0

[MagPulse]

Let's take RAID and use it to halve the time it takes to lose all our data. Great idea.

I'd rather have two RAID-1 arrays, one small and fast and one larger and slower. But maybe l33t gamers don't care about their data.

Re:RAID-0

[Kentamanos]

I use RAID-0 at home. A lot of motherboards only support 0 or 1, and 0 performs better on writes (obviously).

As far as hard drives failing, I find I can easily backup all of the truly important things (source code, documents) to my USB keychain drive. The typical home computer's hard drive is usually about 90% (made it up, probably higher, but you get the point) taken up with things you could install from CD if you lost it and other things that really are not that important.

Re:RAID-0

[Surt]

They mostly don't, it's all reinstallable to them, read/write (mostly read) performance is what matters. A common solution to the increased data vulnerability is to use a backup system for important data.

That means a lot!

[Eightyford]

1574 seconds on the sample size that I used.

Wow, that't amazingly fast!

Re:That means a lot!

[stu42j]

Oh, that's nothing. My system can do a DivX encode in 4 seconds!

Of course, my sample size may not be the same.

Something disturbing

[yfmaster]

they list a feature on the motherboard, "IEEE". Do they realize that IEEE is an orginization, and not a part? The number that goes after IEEE is more important, like 802.11 or 1394

Re:Something disturbing

[jalefkowit]

I can imagine a conversation with their sales guy:

SALES GUY: We support IEEE.

BUYER: "IEEE"? What IEEE standard are you talking about?

SALES GUY (confidently): All of them!

Re:Something disturbing

[TheGavster]

It doesnt implement any particular standard, but it has all of them burned into a ROM in case you need to look something up. In unused regions of the chip, they laid in the names of prominent IEEE members.

Missing review parts

[FidelCatsro]

1: Does it help you save money on your heating bill
2: Could it achieve flight if you took off the side of the case
3: does the Decibel rating make my stage amp look like a pair of cheap headphones
4:Does it weigh more than a small car
6:Does it run linux ;)
7: what's it like in soviet Russia
8: Is this the PC they are running their servers on

Re:Missing review parts

[Secrity]

I read their specs and I can answer two of your questions: It is not as heavy as a small car (at least not a street licensable small car). It does run Linux and it is available with Linux already installed.

RAID Setup: RAID 0 (Zero) Setup

[Malc]

"RAID Setup: RAID 0 (Zero) Setup"

Stupid stupid stupid.

Have fun rebuiliding your system. Really this shouldn't even be labelled "RAID setup". There is no redundancy (the R in RAID). Two discs stripped like this means you have two chances of losing everything on *both* of them. Is hard drive performance so critical that the chance is worth it?

Re:RAID Setup: RAID 0 (Zero) Setup

[Nemith]

Thats why the number is 0. Get it? Zero as in not really RAID.

RAID-0 does have the advantage of being very fast, which is why it was used here.

Re:RAID Setup: RAID 0 (Zero) Setup

[AKAImBatman]

FYI, the A8N board has a couple different hardware RAID configurations built in. If you don't like the RAID 0, you can reconfigure. Here's a list I pulled from here [directron.com]:

NVRAID: RAID0, RAID1, RAID 0+1 and JBOD span cross SATA and PATA.

Department of Redundancy Department

[Junior J. Junior III]

RAID0 should properly be called an AID. But people will just call it an "AID Array", which is redundant as the A in AID already stands for Array. So then the R becomes appropriate again.

Re:RAID Setup: RAID 0 (Zero) Setup

[Surt]

Yes, because backing up your data to an external hard drive is cheap and easy these days. For a gamer, the speed advantage offered by a raid-0 is a not insignificant gaming advantage.

Re:RAID Setup: RAID 0 (Zero) Setup

[Malc]

It's not about mission criticalness. For me, it's my time. Do I want to be spending my time reinstalling things due to poor decisions? And really, how many games suffer from poor performance running off a normal modern hard drive? Besides, how many games are designed so that they thrash the hard drive right in the middle of action? I might buy the argument if it were for video editting, but not games. Get more memory and rely on the system file cache if you must.

Sorry, but people seem to buy in to thi

Venture Brothers

[caesar-auf-nihil]

A bit off topic, but when I saw the headline I started to laugh as it reminded me of "The Monarch" from the 'toon Venture Brothers on Cartoon Network/Adult Swim. I kept thinking about the Monarch's pathetic supercomputer that he had to reboot when giving a powerpoint presentation on how evil his plans were to another super villan.
I supsect if he had the System reviewed in this topic he would still be incompetent, but at least he'd be having fun fragging his enemies.

Re:Venture Brothers

[Blakey Rat]

You think you're hot shit in a champagne glass, but you're really cold diarrhea in a Dixie cup!

While we're plugging PC makers, overdrivepc.com

[MattW]

I bought an Overdrive PC Torque.SLI [overdrivepc.com] a while back. I talked with Mario there, who actually talked me down off a higher end processor, telling me he could hook me up with a slightly lower end, $800 cheaper processor but get far more overclocking out of it than the faster process.

It's fast as hell, and when it had a stability issue due to the overclocking (yes, it was pushing it), he helped tweak it to where it was rock solid.

If you're going to pay this much for a computer, get someone who actually knows how to squeeze the maximum out of it, if you don't have the time or ability to do it yourself.

SLI is always a waste

[vectorian798]

"Video Cards: 2 x NVIDIA Geforce 7800 GTX 256MB GDDR3, VIVO/, Dual-DVI"

No game manufacturer is going to make a game that REQUIRES so much brute-force GPU power to play...that would kill the market. All this would do is make games playable with insane settings like 4x FSAA and 8x Anisotropic Filtering. But most gamers (read: the average gamer) can't tell the difference between different levels of anisotropic, or the difference between 2x and 4x FSAA unless they stop and look at the screen. When is the last time you ran through the jungle in Far Cry and said to yourself while being chased by a mutant monkey with uncanny ability to maul, "Damn these leaves need to lose some jaggies"?

The point is that as soon as games come out that need next generation GPU's, your SLI system is obsolete because it likely won't have HARDWARE features to perform next-generation effects. The analogy I like to make is that 4 GeForce 4 MX's can't match a single GeForce 4 Ti 4200 because the 4 MX doesn't have hardware shaders while the Ti does. So is it really worth dropping that extra money (don't forget, your mobo needs to have extra PCI x 8 or x 16 slot as well, so there is a little extra cost there too)?

That being said, this system you posted is quite beastly :)

Re:SLI is always a waste

[superpulpsicle]

This just meets the Vista low end requirements.

Re:SLI is always a waste

[Silverlancer]

You could run any game out with max multisampling AA and AF on the 7800. With two... you could run... two games at once... with max AA/AF... uh... yeah... ;)

Re:SLI is always a waste

[QuantumPion]

I think the real purpose of the 7800 gtx/sli is for people playing the latest games on HDTV's, which are 1920x1080 resolution. While playing on a big TV, you still need AA so playing Battlefield 2 at 1920x1080 with 4x AA requires quite a bit of horsepower.

Re:SLI is always a waste

[CausticPuppy]

No game manufacturer is going to make a game that REQUIRES so much brute-force GPU power to play...that would kill the market.

Duke Nukem Forever.

Re:SLI is always a waste

[Surt]

The difference for a serious gamer will be in the fps achievable at a high resolution. If you can go from 40 fps (frame latency = 25ms) to 80 fps (frame latency = 12.5 ms) you gain a 12.5 ms reaction time advantage. With human eye to hand latencies running in the 80-120 ms range, that's > 10% advantage. This all assumes of course that you are using a monitor capable of displaying 80fps, but any high end CRT will do that for you.

IEEE

[tsvk]

Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI Premium nForce4 SLI Audio, GB-LAN, IEEE, USB, PCI-E, SATAII w/RAID, DDR-400, ATX

Wow, there's an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers integrated on the motherboard? No wonder it's such an expensive setup...

Learn how RAID works...

[ErMaC]

Why does Hemos think that backing things up to a RAID0 which is "slower" is a convenient thing?

RAID0 is FASTER than a single drive configuration, because you're doubling the number of spindles and heads working together. It also offers NO REDUNDANCY so backing up anything to a RAID0 is completely and utterly retarded. He's got everything ass-backwards.

This is why reviews on Slashdot are moronic, whether it's Zork's misinformed and useless game reviews or hardware reviews by the tech-uneducated editors. Stick to linking to real review sites guys, please.

Now watch in a day there will be a Slashdot story linking to Hemos's review...

Re:Learn how RAID works...

[WillerZ]

Speaking of moronic, where did the "ass-backwards" come from? Surely ass-forwards is a more unconventional orientation?

Re:Learn how RAID works...

[Guysmiley777]

RAID-0 is not automatically faster than a single drive, especially with a crappy integrated RAID controller.

1. Read. 2. Think. 3. Post (optional)

[Anonymous Coward]

The drive configuration:

Hard Drives: 1 x Western Digital 74 GB SATA 10K Raptor (WD740GD), 2 x Western Digital Caviar SE 250 GB SATAII 16MB Cache 7200 RPM (WD2500KS)

The review said:

One of the other features that I liked is the fast primary drive, and back-up, slower, but RAIDed drives. It's nice for installing high access demand apps on the primary, but using the other drives as storage drives.

ErMaC spewed forth:

Why does Hemos think that backing things up to a RAID0 which is "slower" is a convenient thing?

SLI worth it?

[Godeke]

Was any testing of SLI vs non SLI mode done? The tests I have seen really don't show the performance boost that SLI's added cost would seem to warrant. (The results I have seen are about a 25% speed increase for the SLI mode vs single card.)

Frankly, I have grown tired of the constant quest for minor speed increases and find myself playing more and more on consoles and less with "driver of the week" PC games. (Revoke my geek badge if you want). Consoles have eye-sandpaper graphics compared to a high end PC,

Re:SLI worth it?

[LurkerXXX]

Was any testing of SLI vs non SLI mode done? The tests I have seen really don't show the performance boost that SLI's added cost would seem to warrant.

Why would they test that? When you are dumping $5,000 on a gaming system, why bother skimping on a few hundred bucks? Getting an extra 25% framerate for under a tenth of the cost of the machine? Sure!

Besides, if he only had one video card it would mean his penis would be smaller. ;) (I kid, I kid. I'd buy dual cards too if I had silly amounts of disp

Warranty?

[moorcito]

For $5000, you'd think the warrenty would be a bit longer than 6 months. I realize that tech gets old pretty fast, but aren't they being a bit optimistic that in 6 months you'll realize how old school your PC had become and fork over another $5000.

Re:Warranty?

[ettlz]

That's what stuck out when I read this. I've had machines for GBP 750 with two and three year warranties. Six months? Doesn't exactly inspire confidence in their build quality, particularly as experience tells me most faults show up towards the end of the first year of working life.

Actually...

[EzInKy]

...even though this is obviously a blantant advertisement Monarch is one of the sites I've been looking at for the dual opteron system I'm planning on building so I'm looking forward to hearing some honest feedback. In the past I've always just bought my parts seperately for my single CPU machines and assembled them without much hassle but my investment has never been much more than four or five hundred dollars but now that I"m thinking about investing $1500 it would be nice to know the motherboard, process

RAID != Backup or Data Security

[Anm]

One of the other features that I liked is the fast primary drive, and back-up, slower, but RAIDed drives.

Hemos, I won't be tresting that RAID-0 to backup anything. It is strictly a user feature so you can claim you have a really big dic^Hsk.

Anm

my problems with that system

[brennz]

Monarch has a quality reputation, but I have a few problems with that system. In order to build a true screamer, I think some component changeouts and modifications are in order.

Motherboard:
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8we.html [tyan.com] This motherboard supports dual opterons, so you can stick in there 2 dual core opterons. Using processor affinity you could balance load across processors (I am not sure if you can use processor affinity per core - if anyone can answer that, I'd appreciate it.

Ramdriv

Re:my problems with that system

[tomstdenis]

When I am running WoW, VLC, Thunderbird, Firefox, Gimp, TS, and Eric3 all at once. I want them all to be fast and responsive as if I had only one application running.

And 4GB of ram won't help that.

Fucking newbs. You want a high performance box and then you put windows on it?

HAIL SATAN!

Tom

Re:my problems with that system

[brennz]

While I would prefer to use Linux as my x86 gaming OS, I can't because many titles I play are unavailable, and WINE compatibility isn't there yet. I could use VMware and totally kill performance for some of these titles, but I am not that much of a masochist.

Calling someone a newb when talking about OS choices gaming system is somewhat ignorant to say the least. My servers may run Linux/freebsd, but my gaming system will be Windows (until popular titles start shipping on Linux). Yes, I am aware of OSX and

Re:my problems with that system

[dukerobillard]

In order to build a true screamer...dual opterons

For gaming, dual Opterons will actually be slower than a single Athlon FX-57. Games are single threaded, so clock-speed and cache are the thing.

If you plan to play a DVD while uncompressing a 4 GB tar file and compiling a new kernel, well, then dual dual-core Opterons are your boy.

Re:my problems with that system

[brennz]

It is true that a single Athlon FX-57 is faster when running just one application, without taking into consideration performance tuning and processor affinity.

However, many modern gamers are running a great deal of applications.
Teamspeak, game, browser, gamepad software, mouse software, etc. Quickly your common performance tests from *insert_tech_site* are invalid.

Dual processor systems have a kind of zip to them that is very noticeable, even when under heavier loads.

Benchmark request

[ChrisF79]

If the original poster is reading this, could you do me a favor and run an Excel benchmark on it, since that's what I'd be using it for?

Get back to me with the results ASAP... the bank just approved my $5k loan.

um.... it's another fast computer....

[iamhassi]

i read that review and all i see is another fast computer. 6 months from now there will be another fast computer, and 6 months after that and so on.

this isnt news for nerds, it's not even news. Something that happens on a regular basis and that we all know about (that computers get faster!) is not newsworthy.

Kickbacks?

[FreeUser]

OK, I've been a long time slashdot reader (note my userid), and while editorial standards have been slipping noticably over the last year or two, this advertisiement posing as a review really takes the cake.

Is your employer getting paid outright for these, or are they a result of personal kickbacks under the table?

Ugh. I'm just about through with this site.

Imagine a beo...

[Guysmiley777]

... I can't even do it. I tried, I really did.

USB Ports on front of case

[Dare nMc]

why is their no short circuit protection on the front USB straite from the MB? mulitple motherboards I have used crash hard with a short to these, the K8VM800 I am using now, included. I guess this is another feature for the hacker, can have the PC reboot automatically when you plug in your bootable usb fob.

because of that I only want the powered front USB hub (which this system appears to have in addition) in the drive bay.
would be nice if they would allow a hardrive to share the same bay though.

huh?

[no reason to be here]

I thought The Monarch's nemesis was Dr. Venture.

[DRTFA]

I have bought a PC From Monarch

[MBraynard]

I have three comments on the PC I bought. It actually is not much worse than the machine in the review but only cost about 1800.

1) Their prices are about as good as those you find on pricewatch for components.

2) I had a tech issue and they did respond to me. It was my error. They also seemed to be helpful on their forums.

3) They claim to do a burnin but they did not - I know because of the progress reports on the website and because the MB I have records how much time it has been on. They may have reset

4 sticks DDR400?

[LarsG]

I don't think the nforce4 is normally capable of running 4 sticks faster than DDR333. Are those RAM sticks specifically certified for running 4*400 on that particular motherboard?

SLI is kinda cool, and is not just for gaming =)

[Chitlenz]

We work a lot with voodoopc in creating our 3d workstations for Radiologists, and have noted that SLI in "broken" mode does indeed produce 4 monitors' worth of 3d acceleration (with this particular motherboard at least). I'm typing this on exactly the same setup, but with 6800Gt's instead of the new 7800gt's, but I have to say that once you warm up to 60 inches of desktop there's no going back, ESPECIALLY for developers. Every once in awhile I'll kick the whole thing back to SLI mode and play WOW too, and man the result is amazing. It's not so much how high a resolution you can get to as it is how fluid you can make a game, if you follow me =)

-chitlenz

I want the shipping container!

[A nonymous Coward]

From the Monarch page [monarchcomputer.com]

Shipping Weight: 13.00 pounds

Ultra light: 6.8 kg (14 lbs)

I'd like to get hold of that shipping container! Make it a lot of them. I wonder what the shipping weight of the shipping container is ...

FX-57/4800+

[mobby_6kl]

A friend of mine asked me to help chose components for his next PC, and, not paying attention to the prices, we (actually, 'I' would be more appropriate) decided on a single 7800GTX and X2-4800+ instead of two cards in SLI and FX-57. Although the possibility of adding a second gfx card still remains, we decided to only buy one card. It would always be possible to buy a second one, or throw the current one out and buy next gen card which would grind two of these into dust anyway.

Now, FX-57 usually beats the X2-4800+ in games, but by a rather small margin: 5-6fps was the most significant difference. What makes the difference is adding a background task, like file compression or Skype or whatever. FX-57 drops almost in half (if the task is significant), while the X2 only slows down by 3-5fps. Hopefully game developers will take advantage of all the additional cores and the X2 would be even better in the future.

The whole system cost about $2500, including a quality case and PSU, two 250gb drives and all the other stuff necessary.

Newegg Cost

[DnemoniX]

Just out of sheer morbid curiousity I priced this out on Newegg, grand total minus shipping and any applicable tax was $3,702.95 not a bad mark-up they have going there. But if you put it together yourself you won't get the swanky paintjob. But then again you won't get the retarded disk configuration either.

Thermaltake Shark Tower Black - $169.00
Enermax Noisetaker EG701AX-VE-SFMA ATX 2.0 - $149.99
Asus A8N-SLI Premium nForce4 SLI - $175.00
AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (939) - $1,011
Zalman CNPS7000-CU Copper CPU Fan -

Or, for less than $2000...

[joranbelar]

The system I just put together from Newegg [newegg.com]:

• Case: Thermaltake Kandalf VA9000BWS Black Aluminum/Steel ATX Full Tower
• Power Supply: OCZ Powerstream 520W
• Motherboard: EPoX nForce4 EP-9NPA+ ULTRA
• Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
• Memory: 2GB (2x1GB) OCZ DDR PC3200 Platinum (2-3-2-5)
• Hard Drives: 2x Western Digital SATA-II 250GB, RAID-0 Setup
• DVD-RW: NEC Black IDE DVD Burner Model ND-3540A - OEM
• Video Card: BFG Tech Geforce 7800GTX 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16
• Sound Card: SB Audigy 2 ZS
• Speakers: Logitech Z-5500

Re:Welcome

[ackthpt]

I for one welcome our new SLI overlords

I just dodged that bullet myself, when ordering a new mobo with 64 bit Athlon, etc. I just wanted a new mobo and to keep using all the components I'd already spent about $1,000 on and was intent on still using. Cancelled the order quick and got one with the cruddy old AGP. Not ready to need SLI, yet.

SLI has some things to offer, but not to an old code jockey like me who considers Settlers of Catan [sourceforge.net] a worthwhile game.

Re:Welcome

[AKAImBatman]

Cancelled the order quick and got one with the cruddy old AGP.

* /me Jaw Drops

You... went... with an AGP board?! You do realize that nearly all video cards are now PCI Express? [wikipedia.org] FYI, PCI Express is not the same thing as SLI. It's a new standard that has TWICE the bandwidth of AGP. You could have gone for a board like the A8N-E board that has PCI Express but no SLI at a good price.

* /me Jaw Drops Again

I just wanted a new mobo and to keep using all the components I'd already spent about $1,000 on and was inten

Re:Welcome

[EzInKy]

You... went... with an AGP board?! You do realize that nearly all video cards are now PCI Express? FYI, PCI Express is not the same thing as SLI. It's a new standard that has TWICE the bandwidth of AGP. You could have gone for a board like the A8N-E board that has PCI Express but no SLI at a good price.


There a many reasons not to go with PCI Express, including having an already perfectly good working AGP or PCI card. Standards come and go so fast that what you buy today is already obselote and who knows wha

Re:Welcome

[AKAImBatman]

There a many reasons not to go with PCI Express, including having an already perfectly good working AGP or PCI card.

Well, that's the theory anyway. The problem is that if you're investing in a board you want to keep for awhile, you are going to run into problems when you want to upgrade your video card. As a result, he may find himself having to replace his entire Motherboard, CPU, and memory architecture in a year or two just to upgrade his video card. The result is that his upgrade now is false economy.

S

Re:Welcome

[EzInKy]

As a result, he may find himself having to replace his entire Motherboard, CPU, and memory architecture in a year or two just to upgrade his video card. The result is that his upgrade now is false economy. ...

As long as you purchased a board with AGP 2x or higher, an AGP board purchased 5 years ago should still work fine with an AGP video card today.


Can you spot the contradiction here? On the one hand you say that it is false economy to try to get a couple of more years out of a card, on the other you state

Re:Welcome

[AKAImBatman]

No, no contradiction. A board is a far more expensive acquisition than a video card. Purchasing a video card means that *one* component in the system changes. Purchasing a new motherboard means that the board and the CPU need to change at a minimum. Likely, you'll also need to change out the memory and (as I said) the video card because it doesn't support PCI Express.

on the other you state that a board bought five years ago is still good today.

Actually, I was just making the point that the video busses don'

Re:Welcome

[AKAImBatman]

FYI, the NVidia 6600 [mwave.com] is a pretty good card and only costs about $135.00. As for the other stuff, my point was that PCI Express systems have backward compatibility with older PCI cards. I certainly have no difficulties with my Leadtek TV Card [mwave.com] on the A8N-E board I'm currently using.

Anyway, sorry if I'm being a little pushy. I just like to see people future proof their systems whenever possible. It kept my last machine going strong for nearly five years. I'd probably still be using it if some of the hardware w

Re:PSU

[FauxPasIII]

> IIRC Enermax is another one of those generic Taiwanese PSU's which usually
> have a failure rate which just doesn't sit well (with me anyway) being
> hooked up the $,$$$ worth of gear.

Yeah !

Except like, the opposite of that.

Enermax is the most reliable consumer brand in my experience. Their noisetaker
line carries a _3 Year_ replacement warranty. That's not easy to find.

Antec is also quite good.

Re:PSU

[Blue-Footed Boobie]

What?! Enermax is one of the higher-quality PSUs that you can get. There is a reason many servers use them.

I'm just curious, but where did you get your experience with Enermax PSUs from?

Re:OMFG???

[hamburger lady]

Duke Nukem Forever.

Re:OMFG???

[Kentamanos]

I hear Team Fortress 2 will require a machine like this as well...

Re:Target Audience

[smooth wombat]

Like short guys who are always starting fights!

I can't completely agree with that. Being somewhat shorter than the national average (I'm 5' 7") I find that the reason those of us whom you would consider short and starting fights is the result of those who are taller thinking they can do what they want.

For example, when I used to go out to bars (and did my best not to fall asleep because I was bored with the whole scene) invariably there were one or two guys who were taller than myself who felt it w

Re:Target Audience

[MattHaffner]

Hmmm... your .sig seems to disagree with you :)