[TheGrandMom]

At $700, Ultra’s Crysis Warhead PC Comes Benchmarked, Burned-In and Ready To Go | GameCyte

"You don’t have to buy the Ultra Optimized PC to play Crysis Warhead properly, but you’ll be getting one hell of a deal if you do. This afternoon, the man responsible for the build, configuration and marketing of the $700 machine told GameCyte that not only will the system come with everything you’d expect, but every machine will be individually tested, benchmarked and burned-in before arriving at your doorstep.


When we spotted the specs for the official Crysis Warhead PC late yesterday afternoon, we were immediately impressed with the bang-for-the-buck value — and yet quite suspicious of how they managed to offer all that hardware for such a low price. Speedy computer components cost a certain amount no matter how hard you try to scrimp, and so bargain PC companies usually try to hide their cost cutting efforts by using slower chips that retain a big brand name (Intel Celeron, NVIDIA 8500, I’m looking at you.) But here, that obviously wasn’t the case; it’s hard to go wrong with a Core 2 Duo E7300 and a GeForce 9800GT. Plus, the entire system build was vetted by game developer Crytek. So what gives?

Looking at the system specs above, we saw two possible issues right off the bat. The system doesn’t list any kind of OS, and purchasing a new copy of Windows will typically set back gamers $100. Second, looking at the X-Blaster case in which Ultra chose to house the system, we noted that no case fans were included. Might gamers fire up their new PCs, begin playing Crysis and then be confronted halfway through by the sickening smell of fried video components? Taking a further look around TigerDirect, we noticed that they sell a variety of barebones kits, including one that has some pretty respectable specs… but includes a graphics card that doesn’t fit properly in the case. Might new Crysis Warhead PC owners open up their box and find a untested bag of components to piece together themselves?

Confronting Ultra’s product development manager Garrett Bain with these concerns, we were told that our worries were for naught. “We’ve validated all these components together in our engineering labs,” said Bain. “We’ve benchmarked and burned in everything… and when you power it on, you’ll boot into Windows and be ready to install the game.”

We’re not getting the bare-minimum Windows Vista Home Basic, either. Bain confirmed that the Crysis Warhead system will come with a pre-installed copy of Windows XP Professional updated to the latest Service Pack. To our partial embarrassment, the product development manager also confirmed that case fans were most definitely included, and that TigerDirect offers a one-year warranty on the entire build. He noted that gamers would only need to provide their own monitor.

While we weren’t able to get an exact parts list — “We’re still sourcing,” said Bain, who told me that the above image of an EVGA graphics card was not final — we were assured that Ultra would only deal with first-tier partners.

Bain said that no particular deals needed to be made to drive down the price, “just a lot of hard work.” He expressed hope that should the Warhead PC succeed, it might help change the preconceived notion that thousands of dollars are required to play the latest PC titles.

Ultra claims the Optimized PC will run Crysis Warhead on the highest DX9 graphical setting, “Gamer,” at an average 30FPS. The game was specifically optimized for this exact PC configuration; in particular, Bain said the game was fine-tuned for the NVIDIA 9800 GT video card.

Preorders will begin next week, and Bain expects units to ship to consumers and retail CompUSA and TigerDirect stores shortly after the game’s release on September 16th.

While the exceptionally computer-savvy might still find better deals, you’re not going to get that warranty, testing and optimization. We have to admit, a ready-made gaming PC like this is practically unheard of."

[Solymir]

That sounds like a decent deal. If I didn't already own a PC that I built myself I would seriously consider it.

[TheGrandMom]

Yep it is damn nice for a pre-built. I recently ordered parts to build a computer for one of my godsons and if this had already been out, I might have just bought that instead. Actually have all the parts but the cpu since it came sealed in its box but had popped out of the inside packaging and rumbled around enough to bend the pins. Waiting for the replacement now...too bad this isn't already being produced.

[little ninja]

Nice system, to bad I already built one some time back otherwise Id have picked one up.

[Feba]

But can it play anything good?




On a completely unrelated subject, someone needs to make good emulators for more recent consoles. Being able to put a PS1/PS2/PSP (can UMD disks work like regular disks if you pop them out of that plastic shell?)/Xbox disk in your computer and have it run would be great; if not to eliminate the console, to allow people to travel with their games. Although I still say that Sony needs to make a PS3 laptop. We have the technology!