Firebird and Gamers
Gaming PCs have long been recognized as big hulking monsters. Gamers in the past have assumed that, when it came to power, size mattered — at least, in terms of the case.
Notebooks have been growing in popularity and particularly with the impressive power of gaming portables, buyers’ mind have started to change . Savvy gamers now know that a powerful system doesn’t have to overwhelm your workspace.
With that in mind, HP has started selling a desktop gaming system that is relatively compact but still packing a serious punch. They look cool, which also is a high priority for gamers. The new HP Firebird with some Voodoo DNA is another child of HP’s acquisition of Calgary-based Voodoo PC.
In fact, the Firebird looks like a shrunken, yet more stylish version of the Blackbird. It sits on a raised foot (no pun intended), with curved lines on the aluminum-and-black-plastic chassis. As in other Voodoo models lighting provides a dramatic touch, glowing over the foot and through the vents at the top. In a darkened room, it does look spectacular.
The model I saw was the 803, which HP says is “scarce.” It has an Intel Core 2 Quad processor, 4 gigabytes of DDR2-800 RAM, a pair of 320-GB hard drives, dual nVidia GeForce 9800S graphics cards with a total 1-GB of video memory, Creative X-Fi audio and a slot-loading Blu-ray player/DVD burner. Like the Blackbird, parts of the system are liquid-cooled. That is some serious power.
Despite its small size, it’s quite expandable. It has two PCI-E mini slots, as well as a PC-card slot. There are six USB ports, a Firewire port, 2 external SATA drive ports and a Gigabit Ethernet port. It has built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi, which remains a rarity in desktops. It also has a 5-in-1 media card reader. One could not ask for more in teh area of input capability.
Like most notebooks, the Firebird uses an external power brick. Locating the power supply outside the chassis keeps it cooler, allows for the more compact design and also saves on electricity.
It comes with the 64-bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium. The Voodoo PC founder Rahul Sood says it performs beautifully with the latest builds of the Windows 7 beta, so it can be easily upgraded when that new operating system is released, hopefully later this year.
The 803 sells for around $1,800, which is an impressive price for a system this powerful and well-engineered. A less muscular version, the 802, has a slower processor, a standard DVD burner, a smaller hard drive and sells for about $1,300 after rebates.
An interesting thing about these specs is that, on paper, some of them aren’t that good. The hard drives, for example, are the slower, 5,400-RPM models you’d expect to find in a notebook. Most of today's performance-based desktops use 7,200-RPM drives; some even use 10,000 RPM drives. The memory is DDR2 instead of the newer, zippier DDR3. But put the whole package together, and it works well.
The proof is in the gaming. I installed two of the most popular first-person-shooter titles, Valve’s Left 4 Dead and Microsoft’s Call of Duty: World at War. The Left 4 Dead looks great and doesn’t require the most muscular machine around to play well. Call of Duty is more challenging, and plays best on high-end hardware. With both games, I cranked up the settings and screen resolution, playing on an 25-inch HP w2558hc widescreen monitor, with a maximum resolution of 1,900-by-1,200 pixels.
As expected, Left 4 Dead played beautifully. Even on its hardest player settings, which spawn hordes of zombie mobs at every turn, the Firebird stayed smooth. I tried everything but couldn’t get Left 4 Dead to stutter or burp. Unfortunately, I could nly get this game to run at 1,600-by-1,200 resolution, so it wouldn’t push to the max.
Call of Duty ran butter-smooth. With all settings on high and cranked up to the full 1,900-by-1,200 resolution, the World War II game played cleanly during all of the most harried firefights.
Frankly, the specs on the Firebird made me skeptical of its capabilities, but this machine is clearly a case of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. It’s a worthy gaming machine, particularly at this price.