HP Takes Blackbird Game System Quad Core

By Geoff Duncan January 21, 2008

Hewlett-Packard might still hold the top spot for worldwide computer sales, but the company still wants to win over the hearts and minds of gamers. To that end, the company has just announced its Blackbird 002 alpha desktop gaming system, now featuring a new 45nm Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 quad-core processor. The QX9650 uses Intel’s Hi-K hafnium-based metal gate in its transistosrs, boosting performance and lowering power consumption compared to its Core 2 predecessors.

“We’re thrilled to offer gamers the speed and strength of the new Intel architecture,” said CTO of HP’s global gaming unit Rahul Sood, in a statement. “The HP Blackbird 002 was designed to redefine the gaming experience and delight even the hardest-core user. Intel’s new technology helps us to continue to deliver on that promise.”

The Blackbird 002 alpha features dual ATI Adeon X2900 video cards with 1 GB of video RAM, 2 GB of system memory, a 160 GB 10,000 rpm hard drive, a 16× combo drive and a 16× DVD±RW drive, an Ageia PhysX 100 Series PCI-E accelerator card, a factory-sealed liquid-cooled CPU, a 15-in-1 memory card reader, and Microsoft Vista Home Premium. Prices on the Blackbird 002 alpha start at $5,499.

If going through a more-traditionally boutique high-end PC brand is more your style, HP is also offering the QX9650 quad-core processors on Omen desktop systems available through its VoodooPC subsidiary…just don’t expect the prices to be any friendlier.

Editors' Recommendations

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

Computing

HP finally has a flagship gaming laptop, and it looks killer

A photo of a man using the Omen Transcend 16 gaming laptop on a table wrapped in a snake.

HP has been well-known in the PC gaming space for its Omen brand, but the company hasn't had a flagship gaming laptop that felt like it could keep up with the Razers and Alienwares of the world. But the newly announced Omen Transcend 16 is just that.

Not only is it thinner and lighter than the standard Omen 16 (0.78 inches thick and 4.6 pounds), but it's also more advanced in almost every way. The highlight of the show is the new mini-LED panel. We saw a lot of these same mini-LED panels introduced at gaming laptops at CES earlier this year, and HP continues the trend by bringing it to the Omen Transcend 16.

Computing

The RTX 4090 is begging for a game that can take advantage of it

The RTX 4090 among green stripes.

The new Nvidia RTX 4090 looks to be absurdly powerful. It's a hot and power-hungry card too, and even without third-party benchmarks to confirm it, it's already clear that the RTX 4090 is leaps and bounds ahead of even the best cards from the previous generation.

But is there actually any point to all that power? Sure you can run the existing catalog of AAA games at 4K with ray tracing enabled at over 100 fps, but there's nothing on the docket that will really push the 4090, and that's a problem for Nvidia. It may be a while before an exciting new game can show how much the RTX 4090 can really do.
Useless bang for all that buck

Computing

Six-core CPUs finally overtake quad-core processors on Steam

10th Gen Intel Core processor on a motherboard.

Six-core processors have finally overtaken quad-core chips as the most popular type of CPU for PC gamers.

Valve’s recently released Steam Hardware Survey for March has revealed that the period of domination for quad-core CPUs -- at least where gaming setups are concerned -- has ended due to the increasing popularity of hex-core processors, which is a system’s CPU that features six cores.