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27
AUGUST 2005 |
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Dueling
Destroyer II by Totally Awesome Computers |
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Have you heard of the Dueling
Destroyer, the Annihilator, or even the Ridiculously Insane
computer? These are some of the names used for gaming
systems offered by the company Totally Awesome Computers (TAC).
Behind these intimidating names are more than just some great
computers...they are Totally Awesome Computers!
Totally Awesome Computers is a
company that has 9 retail stores in the state of Utah.
That doesn't mean that you have to be in Utah to be able to
purchase their products. You can visit TAC at their
website at
http://www.totallyawesomecomputers.com. TAC offers a wide
range of computers that are designed to fit the needs of most
users. Whether you are looking for a computer for your
home or office, TAC has something for you. They even do
servers if you are a company looking for a solution. The
name Totally Awesome Computers isn't just a catch-name.
They guarantee that anything you buy from them will have
'Totally Awesome' quality, price, and service.
The service that a company offers is
something that is factored by most consumers in the purchase of
a computer. There are companies that do have great
products, but simply have terrible serivce ( I won't mention any
names). Just because of a bad experience with the service
of a company can easily prevent a customer from purchasing a
product from the company ever again. TAC offers service
that might even put Dell's tech support to shame.
According to TAC's website, "When
you buy a Totally Awesome Computer, not only are you buying the
BEST, you're getting unsurpassed service and support for the
rest of your life. Try getting that from one of the big
guys. We back our systems with our Award Winning Lifetime
Service Guarantee. If anything goes wrong with your
computer...even if it's your fault...just bring it in to any of
our stores and we will fix it free of charge. On top of
that, we cover all our hardware for a full 3 years.
Whether you need software updates, a complete reload, upgrades,
virus, and spy ware removal or just a tune up, you will never
again pay for service."
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Before we move on, here are the
specifications of the system as listed on TAC's website. I
am able to confirm these specifications with the system that I
am reviewing.
For some clarification, the two GeForce 6800 GT graphics cards
in this system were manufactured by eVGA. The memory in
this system used a total of 2 slots with 512MB in each slot.
The Samsung optical drive is not a DVD recorder, it is only
capable of reading DVD's and reading/writing to CD's. The
8-channel audio and Gigabit Ethernet are integrated with the
motherboard.
Lian Li PC-61
Aluminium Case
550 Watt ATX
ASUS A8N-SLI motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ Socket 939
1GB SuperTalent DDR SDRAM (3GB Max)
Sony 1.44 MB Floppy Drive
2 x 74GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM SATA, RAID 0
Samsung DVD/CDRW combo drive
Multi Format Flash Card Reader
2 x 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6800 GT PCI-E
8-channel Realtek Audio
Marvell Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 with License and CD
McAfee Virus Scan
1-Year Parts, Labor and 24 hour tech support
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Since the system comes with a Lian
Li PC-61 Aluminium case, the assembled computer system arrived
inside the case's original box. This box was untouched
during shipping because it was inside another larger brown
cardboard box.
When opening the Lian Li box, inside was the computer system and
a clear plastic bag containing the extra contents included with
the system. First of all, it contains the original manuals
of the motherboard and the graphics cards. Software-wise,
there is a CD that came with the Samsung combo optical drive.
The CD includes multimedia tools such as Nero Express 6, InCD 4,
and PowerDVD 5. These are generally use to allow you to
burn CD's or you can watch DVD's or videos with PowerDVD.
A bundled CD is included which includes 14 different programs to
help complement the system. The more notable programs
included on the CD are Pinnacle Studio, Mcafee Virusscan,
MusicMatch, Eudora Pro, Diskeeper Lite, and OpenOffice.
It's not the greatest software, but it will manage for most
people. The manuals of the graphics cards include CDs
which contain the necessary drivers if you do ever need them if
you reinstall your system. Because this system is intended
to be a gaming system, I was surprised not to find a single full
version game included with the system to take advantage of the
power and performance of this system.
Other contents included with the system are two extra Serial ATA
cables, a power cable, two S-video out cables, and four DVI to
VGA adapters. The reason that there are four is because
each video has two DVI connectors to allow for the dual display
feature to be used if needed. Also, not everyone has a
computer monitor that supports DVI, therefore, the adapters
allow the use of up to 4 VGA monitors.
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As mentioned, this system is
all contained within a Lian Li PC-61 Aluminum case. The
case is completely black, but has a brushed metal look.
Many people appreciate Lian Li cases because of its high build
quality while having a clean, professional look. This case
has a large window on the left side. The floppy drive,
multimedia card reader, and CD-ROM drive are also black to match
the color the of the case. Because this is an aluminum
case, the case generally dissipates heat better than plastic
cases and is lighter than steel cases. |
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When looking
through the window, it is seen that TAC has done a good job in
maintaining a clean look. All the wires are neatly tied or
tucked around the sides to leave the center of the motherboard
free from obstruction. This helps maximize the airflow
that is going through the case.
There is some lighting in the case because of power supply.
The power supply has a LED fan to give it a modded look.
The main fan of the power supply lights up blue which does give
some light to be able to see the components through the window
in low light.
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At first, the system wouldn't boot
up because it couldn't detect the hard disks. It was later
determined it was because the Serial ATA wires connected to the
motherboard had become loose during the shipping process.
After the wires were properly connected, everything worked
alright. I was presented with a screen to help setup
Windows XP properly. This screen is usually seen after a
clean installation of Windows XP.
I was able to experience an overall
boost in performance from the two 10,000 RPM drives in a Raid 0
configuration. A Raid 0 configuration is where you have
two identical drives working at the same time which
theoretically results in twice the performance of a single hard
drive. In a way, half of the data goes on one drive and
half on the other. The only downside to this type of
configuration is that if one hard drive goes bad, then you've
lost all your data. The boost in performance is especially
noticeable in the startup of the computer, in games, and even
when doing using common applications. Even with a bunch of
applications and games installed (they were installed after),
the computer continues to start up consistently in under 25
seconds. Although games mainly rely on the video cards,
the benefit of the Raid configuration is slightly faster loading
times. In addition, it also takes less time for the
hard drives to load things when working with applications that
like to use large files.
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The system was tested under a wide
variety of both theoretical and real-world performance
benchmarks. I am using the Forceware version 71.89
drivers.
Disclaimer:
The following benchmark numbers are the values that I obtained
when I ran the tests on the machine. If you have any questions
or comments about how they were obtained, please contact me.
I’d be glad to re-run and retest any benchmarks that you think
may be a bit inaccurate. The benchmarks were run in order to
provide a general idea of the performance of the system. The
results you obtain may be slightly different than mine.
3DMark03
3DMark03 still manages to be a popular benchmark for many
reviewers as well as users. If you have looked at TAC's
website, you may have noticed that they show the 3DMark03 scores
that they obtained when they ran it for each of their gaming
systems. I specifically ran 3DMark03 in order to compare
my result with theirs. TAC reports a 3DMark03 score of
19,300. When I used the default benchmark settings in
3DMark03, I was able to obtain a score of 19275, which is
extremely close to their advertised score of 19,300. This
was the score that was obtained right out of the box. I'm
sure that if you were to tweak settings on the computer, you
will be able to obtain an even higher score.
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3DMark05
3DMark05 is Futuremark's latest gaming benchmark program
which tests and puts stress on even the most powerful video
cards on the market today. I also ran 3DMark05 on its
default benchmark settings and was able to obtain a respectable
score of 8880.
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Sisoft Sandra
The CPU, memory, and hard drives in the system determine the
bulk of the performance of this system. I ran several
benchmarks in Sisoft Sandra in order to test various aspects of
the system individually to see how well they perform.
First was the CPU Arithmetic benchmark. This benchmark
tests the raw power of the processor by performing floating
point instructions. The AMD 4000+ processor stays well
ahead of the Intel 3.8Ghz 570 processor with a Dhrystone ALU
score of 11128MIPS and a Whetstone FPU/iSSE2 score of 3793/4922.
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Next, I used the memory bandwidth
benchmark. This test basically determines how well the
chipset of the motherboard is able to communicate with the
memory modules. The valules I obtained from the benchmark
were on par with the reference PC3200 based on the Intel 925X
chipset. The integer buffered score was 4732MB/s and the
floating buffered score was 4713MB/s.
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HDTach
In order to test the hard drive performance again, I used
HDTach to determine the hard drive read speed of the two hard
drives in the Raid configuration. I was able to obtain a
burst read speed of 191MB/second with a random access time of
7.98MB/s. I was impressed because these results are pretty
close to the burst Serial ATA II speeds in my Hitach T7K250
review. Based on the graph, the hard drives were able to
maintain a consistent average read speed of 100.1MB/s. |
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Doom 3 |
Now, onto our first real world game
test. With its technically superior game engine created
from scratch, Doom 3 manages to be a good benchmark. If
you've played the game before, this game makes used of extensive
shadows. The game was tested using a timedemo. With
no antialiasing or anisotropic filtering, Doom 3 was generally
able to stay very close to an average 100 frames per second from
1024 x 768 to 1600 x 1200 resolution. When going from a
smaller to a larger resolution, the drop in frames left a
minimal impact on the game performance.
Even when antialiasing and anistropic filtering are turned on
(4AA/8AF), the performance is about 20 frames less than the
previous resolution. Even at 1600 x 1200 resolution, Doom
3 is still very playable staying above 60 frames per second. |
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Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2 is another great first person shooter.
When testing the game without any AA and AF, the framerates
turned out to be very similar. Even with antialiasing and
anistropic filtering on, the framerates still stayed close to
the same range. As a note, the framerates reported are
lower than typical gameplay because the timedemo was taken
during an intense graphical scene. There was a lot of
water and clouds making extensive use of pixel shaders.
There was little difference between the resolutions with or
without AA/AF because Half-Life 2 is a CPU-intensive game which
relies on the CPU a lot more than graphics (doesn't mean that
Half-Life 2 has lesser graphics). |
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Chronicles of Riddick
Chronicles of Riddick is one of those movie-type games that
actually was pretty good. As an Open GL game, this game is
graphic intensive and the numbers do show it. Shader Model
2.0 was used since version 3.0 would cause extremely low frame
rates despite the 6800 GT being able to support it. I have
played Chronicles of Riddick on a single Geforce 6800 GT before
and have obtained similar results. These results show how
SLI doesn't always have an immediate benefit in all games.
Nevertheless, the game is still quite playable.
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Performance-wise, this system offers
very good performance, but not the best. Based on the
gaming benchmark tests, I discovered that it was the processor
that mainly limited the performance for some games. With
this system containing an AMD 64 4000+ processor, this processor
is already the top of the line for consumer desktop processors.
Totally Awesome Computers could have easily added an even better
processor such as the AMD 64 FX processor, but that would mean
adding a significant amount to the price tag. I would also
have liked to see at least one full version game included with
the system.
The Dueling Destroyer II is
considered a bargain at the price of $2399 which many people
will find as the main attraction. That number alone may be
considered a large number, but among the world of SLI systems,
it is a bargain. At this price, this system offers a great
price to performance ratio. For those who are looking for
a computer system with the SLI technology without breaking their
bank account, I would recommend this system. TAC managed
to choose the 'sweet spot' of components that offer the best
bang for your buck.
When combined with TAC's motto of personalized and responsive
support, there really isn't any reason why you shouldn't
consider Totally Awesome Computers for your gaming PC. As
mentioned in the beginning of this review TAC does offer other
types of computers besides gaming computers, therefore, there is
something for everyone. If you are interested in what TAC
has to offer, I would suggest having a look at TAC's website to
see how they can serve you.
Reviewed by
ronald@digitalreviews.net
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