Voodoo PC OMEN a121x CrossFire Extreme Gamer PC

Benchmark And Performance Analysis:
The Voodoo OMEN CrossFire a121x posted some of the fastest general application benchmark scores we've seen to date.  In fact, many times the system produced the top benchmark score we've ever recorded from an off-the-shelf setup, especially in our Office, Windows Media Encoder, and Cinebench testing.  From a gaming perspective, and frankly that's what we need to focus on when considering this product's overall value, the OMEN CrossFire also offers up best-of-class performance, trading punches with our ever-potent GeForce 7900GTX SLI reference system.

There are a few caveats that are more or less intrinsic to the base technologies the system is built upon, however - those being its dual Radeon X1900 XT graphics cards in CrossFire mode.  Here's where the OMEN CrossFire unfortunately isn't quite as shiny as its impressive chassis and cooling system. During testing, we saw graphical anomalies with 3DMark06 when CrossFire was enabled, but perhaps more discouraging was the somewhat flaky behavior of ATI's drivers, which occasionally hung while loading the Catalyst Control Center, requiring a reboot of the machine.

Then of course there's ATI's more limited support for CrossFire over a broad list of gaming titles and their somewhat cumbersome CrossFire dongle hanging out the backside of this utterly gorgeous machine, like a blemish frankly.  While CrossFire definitely has come a long way, it's not as bullet-proof as NVIDIA's SLI technology. And you can't get around the fact that you are at the mercy of ATI to release CrossFire support for a new game title, versus SLI which can be enabled by manually configuring a game profile and selecting a multi-GPU rendering mode in their driver control panel.  That said, ATI has been spot-on with very frequent driver releases. Also, conversely, with ATI GPUs you have the ability to run HDR simultaneously with AA in upcoming and even a few current game titles, as we've shown you with our Oblivion testing.  This is a feature that simply isn't supported in current NVIDIA hardware when certain types of HDR are used.  There are obvious pluses and minuses depending on which side of the competitive 3D palette you fall.

Again, however, we can't fault Voodoo for these small shortcomings of the OMEN CrossFire.  Prospective customers that are interested in the Ferrari-like performance and Cadillac build-quality that the OMEN line has to offer, should be well aware of what makes a CrossFire solution tick.  And if you're not comfortable dropping $6K on a dual-GPU OMEN CrossFire, there's always an OMEN SLI (with dual GeForce 7900 GTX SS cards) but you'll have to fork out a bit more cash for a similar build configuration.

Regardless, it's hard to imagine a better built machine than what was shipped into us from the folks at Voodoo PC and the incarnation they call OMEN.  What you should know about the Voodoo OMEN line of systems is that you can pick and choose your own configurations, much like many on-line system builders, but the product you'll receive is anything but ordinary.  In fact, it's extraordinary in many ways - extraordinary custom chassis design - extraordinary cooling systems - extraordinary cabling and lighting - extraordinary system components - extraordinary build quality. Backed up with performance metrics that will have your buddies green with envy, the Voodoo OMEN CrossFire a121x is just what the Witch-Doctor ordered, if you have the cash to "get in the game".

.  Industrial strength build .  Killer custom chassis w/ lighting .  Amazingly tight, self contained liquid-cooling .  Factory overclocked to 2.95GHz .  Smoking-HOT performance .  HDR With AA in (Oblivion)	. CHA-CHING! - Pricey . CrossFire not as mature as SLI

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