HP Blackbird ‘kicks the living crap out of Dell XPS’ – read the HP interview

Posted at: 11:38am 7th September 2007 by Ben Hardwidge

We talk to Rahul Sood and Mark Solomon from HP about the company's new water-cooled gaming PC

The first piece of design to come out of HP’s acquisition of Voodoo has finally been unveiled, and the Blackbird 002 is easily the company’s most striking PC yet. It’s water-cooled, it looks like it’s hovering and it’s even compatible with both SLI and CrossFire. We’re joined by Rahul Sood, chief technologist of HP Gaming (and regular CPC columnist), and Mark Solomon from HP, who are going to tell us all about it.

Who do you think will be interested in buying this PC then?

Rahul: I think anybody looking at a high-end desktop will look at this system and realise that there’s no comparison. I also think that it will reach a wider audience because of the price point not just for gaming but also video editing, PhotoShop and image manipulation. We also think that the DIY market will be hard pressed not to want one of these.

The first quote in your press release is from Ageia. Does this mean PhysX cards will be an option when buying the PC? What’s your opinion on PhysX given the lack of current game support?

Rahul: That’s a good question. PhysX will be an option. We’re agnostic to all kinds of technology, so in other words, we’re offering it as an option. We’re also offering Nvidia and ATi as an option, and we’re offering Intel and AMD as an option.

Will there be a choice of motherboard as well?

Rahul: Well, when we get to the later boards for AMD, yes, but we’re only doing Intel at first. What’s really cool is that we’re only using the nForce chipset for Intel, because it’s the best chipset, but we’re also giving the choice of CrossFire or SLI on it.

Sorry, did you just say you were running CrossFire on an nForce SLI chipset?

Rahul: That’s correct.

How do you do that?

Rahul: With a little bit of Voodoo magic! *laughs* It’s all a part of the whole Voodoo DNA thing, and working with our partners to make it happen.

What does Nvidia think of this?

Rahul: You know, that’s a very good question! If I could look at the face of my Nvidia ref right now and see what he was thinking, I’d probably say that he gets it. I think Nvidia understands that Blackbird is a game-changing system. In other words, it’s no longer about the technology inside the machine; it’s about the customer experience. That is how we designed Blackbird, and that is why we’re agnostic when it comes to components. Most customers don’t really know the difference between CrossFire or SLI. What they care about is how that game is going to look, how easy will it be to play – they care about the visual quality. We have no stickers on the outside of the box, other than the HP logo, and we have the Voodoo logo on the inside, but we’re not going to have Intel, AMD, Nvidia or ATi logos

So will customers have a complete choice over the CPU and graphics card in the Blackbird?