I expected a quantum leap over and above my humble Orange Box.
BUY FALCON NORTHWEST PC
I thought that throwing enough money at a PC would buy Ultra settings in everything, even at 4K. But before I started using the Red Baron, I didn't think compromise would be necessary. Anti-aliasing is far, far less important at 4K than it is at lower resolutions. Turning off anti-aliasing is a fair compromise: at this pixel density, I couldn’t tell the difference with it on or off.
You can lower the quality to run more smoothly at 4K, or you can alternatively turn down the resolution to run at max settings, but you can’t have everything. If I spent this much money on a computer, I'd want to be able to play everything at Ultra settings, 60 frames per second. With that incredibly high pixel density, I could turn off anti-aliasing without noticing a graphical difference, but now we start to touch on the disappointment of my time with this $8,000 rig. For a more detailed explanation of anti-aliasing, read this guide from our own Tyler Wilde, but essentially it smooths the rough edges of a game’s pixels, and 4K has a lot of pixels. The real framerate killer, though, was antialiasing. 4K can bring even the Red Baron to its knees at max settings. Increasing resolution exponentially increases the strain on your GPU. 3840x2160 resolution is still unrealistically demanding for graphics cards with 4GB of VRAM, just as it was when we wrote about gaming in 4K a year ago.
In order to get the game running above 60fps without dropping in combat, I had to lower the settings down to Medium, with a few reaching the High marker.
With the power of three 980’s, I expected the Red Baron to cut through any game at max settings like a hot sword through orc, but the sword got stuck half-way through. It ran slow.īy that I mean the framerate dropped to 17fps whenever I got into combat, and wasn’t much better standing still. I cranked all the settings to the top, set the resolution to 4K, and watched as my sky-high expectations came crashing back down to Earth.
BUY FALCON NORTHWEST INSTALL
Crash landingĪrmed with an Asus PB287Q 28” 4K monitor-along with a new Corsair K70 keyboard and a Logitech G502 Proteus Core mouse for the full upgrade experience-the first thing I did was install Shadow of Mordor, the prettiest modern game I have spent significant time with, to see just how gorgeous it could look. Play any game at max settings without beading up a single drop of sweat from its water-cooling tubes. I thought this computer could do anything. Probably the only way it could be better is with a fourth 980, and when you begin debating between your third and your fourth top-of-the-line graphics card, you’re probably splitting hairs. It redefines the term “beastly.” Until Nvidia announced the Titan X at GDC, the Red Baron essentially represented the peak of what is currently possible in a gaming computer. This computer has three GTX 980s, 32GB of RAM, an Intel Core i7-5960X, half a terabyte of solid state in the form of an M.2 SSD, and a 3TB HDD-not to mention a shiny red paint job. Other than the case itself, this is not a pretty rig. My 750GB hard drive was torn out of my college laptop after its graphics card died and is unceremoniously velcroed to the inside of my orange BitFenix Prodigy M case. My screen was a hand-me-down Dell S2409W 24” monitor from my dad’s office, I’ve been using the same Microsoft RT2300 keyboard and Logitech MX518 mouse for nearly a decade. Unfortunately, it’s sort of downhill from there. It’s got a GTX 760, 8GB of RAM, an Intel i5-4670 CPU, and a Kingston 124GB SSD for the OS. My own PC is lovingly named the Orange Box. Unfortunately, my time with the Red Baron, and the experience of 4K, were nowhere near as revolutionary as I had hoped.
BUY FALCON NORTHWEST WINDOWS
I had high hopes for gaming and regular Windows use at 4K resolution. Admittedly, shoving my PC to the side to make room felt a bit adulterous, but the Mach V really is on another level in terms of power. It is an absolute monster, and I was excited to be able to really spend time on it. For a week, the Falcon Northwest was my work and gaming rig, complete with a 4K monitor powered by three GTX 980s.
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