HP Takes on Apple with the New Voodoo
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 11, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
The New Voodoo Omen
An all aluminum chassis, integrated 7" LCD display (800 x 480), slot loading optical drives and liquid cooling: it's the new Omen.
This thing looks good and targets an entirely different market than the Envy 133. Prices will start at around $7000 for the Omen, with average configurations expected to be around $10,000. Think that's too much? It doesn't matter, you have to be invited to purchase the Omen. Voodoo is building this thing, at least at first, for its long term customer base. It is limited production but we have no idea exactly what sort of production numbers that will end up being.
The system will ship with an ASUS Striker Extreme II based on the nForce 790i chipset, you can pick either a Core 2 Extreme QX9770 or QX9650 (3.2GHz or 3.0GHz) and 2GB, 4GB or 8GB of memory is offered.
Both SLI and CrossFire are supported using the 8800 Ultra or Radeon HD 3870, but we expect that it won't be long before the GPU list is upgraded to include some upcoming GPUs that will launch before these things ship.
The Omen features six completely tool-less drive bays, just open the cover and pop in a drive.
The internals of the machine are pretty unique, the motherboard tray has been rotated 90 degrees clockwise in order to promote better cooling (heat rises out of the top of the machine). All of the water cooling tubes in the machine feature quick release connectors that make emptying fluid or removing your motherboard a lot easier.
We weren't allowed to take pictures of the prototype Omen, its release will be a little while from now compared to the Envy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
56 Comments
View All Comments
michael2k - Thursday, June 12, 2008 - link
Were you a Mac user that bought the first Intel Macs?The software was at worst 2x slower.
And... you say, "They are being held back by inferior industrial design", which is exactly what was written in the intro for this article. The only reason Vista was mentioned was because that was an aspect of PC design the OEMs had precious control over, so the only thing left for them to tackle was industrial design.
You think you are superior for not "succumbing" to pro-Mac sentiment? Is that like not "succumbing" to pro-Zune sentiment, or pro-XBox sentiment, or any other "underdog gaining in popularity" sentiment?
Steve Guilliot - Saturday, June 14, 2008 - link
Yes, I bought one of the first Intel Mac Minis, and I had to upgrade the RAM to 2GB because of Rosetta. I have some experience here, thanks.So I'm wrong becuase the speed hit from Rosetta was 2x instead of 5x. Don't you know you're making my point? Anandtech articles frequently make much of a 3% speed increase due to faster RAM, etc. Don't you think a 50% performance hit is significant?
Second, if you only percieve a 2x slowdown, it's because the Intel hardware was fundamentally faster masking much of the slowdown. You can't seriously say the speed improvement from Photoshop CS2 to CS3 was only 2x.
I notice you ignored my point about poor app stability. I've had apps crash in Rosetta far more frequently than Vista pre-SP1 (which is to say almost never).
It doesn't matter that the article mentioned the inferior industrial design when they go on to put blame on MS. Maybe the only thing the OEMs could tackle was industrial design. So? They still failed at that, didn't they?
I own a 5G iPod, a Zune, an Intel Mac, and a few PCs. I do see both sides, and I can say with certiantly that the pro-Mac position is hyped, and MS is getting shorted by the tech community who think it's cool to blast Windows.
Inkjammer - Thursday, June 12, 2008 - link
Yep, I concur. I've been playing around with Vista since launch day and I've only had one app (out of dozens and dozens) that wouldn't work right. Short of some driver issues (Creative and Nvidia) I never had any real Vista-specific issues.On my old Toshiba Tecra M7, Vista BSOD'd the first time I loaded it up. When I rebooted, Vista gave me a warning messaged that it detected the crash was caused by an incompatible BIOS and that a new BIOS was available for download, even provided a link as to where to get the update. Never had a problem after flashing my system. I was rather impressed with that.
ElFindo - Thursday, June 12, 2008 - link
It seems to me that I had more trouble getting things running under XP out of the box. When there was that initial shift and everything was 'compatibility mode', which didn't work half the time anyways. In fact some of those same programs I had issues running under XP (mostly games in my experience) actually did run on Vista out of the box.Rev1 - Wednesday, June 11, 2008 - link
I'll agree there with you on that, when i 1st got my comp last year at vista launch most of my probs with it not working right was vista, and a cheap nzxt 500w power suply which was purely my fault. Having said that though i think vista works fine now exept no Hd acceleration for sounds cards like eax. I thought my logitech z5300 on a audigy 2zs on xp sounded light years better than my current z5500 on a X-fi extreme gamer on vista. So bad actually i switch to the onboard realtek and use the optical connection for sound.adelaidewright - Friday, February 11, 2011 - link
Definitely, Windows 7 is about to impresses the XP users who resisted to Vista on the ground of performance and compatibility. Windows' newest avatar has a great look and it consumes least of the system resources. It's not surprising that more and more users are migrating to Windows 7. Windows 7 is a multi talented Operating System which includes native functionality to read and write Blue-Ray discs. Windows 7 has many built-in tools to help with program compatibility and it also features an improved backup solution to help keep your information safe. Windows7 is an advanced Operating System with excellent features. Windows 7 builds on the substantial investment.The Window Support is an independent provider of on-demand tech support and not affiliated with any third party brand unless specified. Their service was very professional and resolved my problem completely. As always were very patience and knowledgeable. They managed to solve the problem.
http://www.thewindowssupport.com