HP Blackbird 002 High Performance Gaming System

Name: HP Blackbird 002 High Performance Gaming System - Page 4
Brand: HP

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, September 05, 2007, 08:00 AM EDT

How the test system was configured: We tested the Blackbird 002 exactly as it came configured from HP. The system was shipped with its Core 2 Extreme QX6850 CPU pre-overclocked to 3.67GHz and Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit edition) installed. NVIDIA's official Forceware 162.22 drivers came installed on the system along with the latest DX update, but the operating system itself was not fully patched. The only modification made to the Blackbird 002 was the installation of our benchmark software and games.

Test System

Intel Inside!

HP Blackbird 002

Core 2 Extreme QX6850 Overclocked
(3.67GHz - Quad-Core)

Asus Striker Extreme
(nForce 680i SLI Chipset)

4GB Corsair DDR2-8500
(1GB x 4)

GeForce 8800 Ultra SLI
On-Board Ethernet
On-board Audio

Seagate ST332062
WD1600 ADFS HD
7200 RPM SATA

Windows Vista Ultimate 32-Bit
NVIDIA Forceware v162.22
DirectX 9.0c (August 2007)

Preliminary Testing with SiSoft SANDRA XI

Synthetic Benchmarks

We began our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA XI, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. We ran three of the built-in subsystem tests that partially comprise the SANDRA XI suite with the HP Blackbird 002 ( CPU Arithmetic, Multimedia, and Memory Bandwidth) . All of the scores reported below were taken with the system running as configured by HP with a CPU clock speed of 3.67GHz.

For reference, we've included benchmark scores from our recent Core 2 Extreme QX6850 launch coverage. Please note, our test machines ran Windows XP Professional while the Blackbird 002 used Windows Vista.

In these low-level sub-system benchmarks, the Blackbird 002 obviously trounced the "stock" systems, thanks to its significant CPU clock speed advantage. In all of the tests, the Blackbird 002 is roughly 8% to 15% faster than the reference systems.

Tags: Gaming, HP, system, Gaming System, performance, rf, STEM, black, RMA, Gamin, AC, AM, K

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com