Interview: Alienware Graphics Amplifier with Joe Olmsted

Original image Courtesy of Dell Inc.

At PAX Australia, we had a quick interview with Joe Olmsted — Alienware’s Director of Product Planning — about the new Alienware Graphics Amplifier. This device is not the first of its kind as ASUS released the ASUS XG Station in 2008. The ASUS XG Station connected to a notebook via an ExpressCard slot, required external power, and provided a PCIe 2.0 connection — PCIe 1.0 x16 in reality due to bandwidth limits. While it was able to work with any brand, in theory almost all installations on non-ASUS branded hardware were filled with issues, real world results were somewhat mixed.

ASUS only provided a very select lineup of notebooks that supported the ASUS XG Station. While the idea was similar the ASUS XG Station barely even hit the market — selling only in Australia. The ASUS XG Station shortcomings were bandwidth limitations, a small choice of upgrade options and GPU power. Between its Consumer Electronics Show unveiling in January 2007 and its limited release in May 2008 notebook GPU power almost doubled completely for both the AMD and Nvidia camps. With the retail VGA configuration being the desktop-class Nvidia 8600GT, the ASUS XG Station was nearly 5% slower than the soon to be released notebook-class Nvidia 9800M.

Right product, wrong time.

Alienware — through design or having the appropriate technology this time — seems to have gotten the concept mostly right. The Alienware Graphics Amplifier appears to have resolved the bandwidth issues by using a newer connection bus, which in turn allows greater GPU selection due to the I/O bus bottleneck being removed. Now you can upgrade with the GPU power you want, rather than the GPU power a company offered.

For the Alienware Graphics Amplifier, they started by looking at the power draw from a single VGA card. The final power ceiling they ended up with was 460 watts. "Put any card in there you want. There aren't too many cards going over 460 Watts. Even a Titan Black is not 400 Watts." The PSU contained inside the device — avoiding the need to have a separate power brick — supports either AMD or Nvidia full length, dual-height graphics cards up to 375 Watts.

Unlike the ASUS XG Station, which required a complete shutdown in order to install or remove the device, the Alienware Graphics Amplifier supposedly does not. "The Magic in this is in Software. So the biggest difference is if you pull the plug while it's running your system does not crash. It may seem like a simple thing; however it is a big thing." This is contradictory to what other websites are reporting with claims it also requires a complete shutdown. A real world hands on will allow us to confirm this.

The cable that connects the Alienware Graphics Amplifier to the Alienware 13 has a proprietary Alienware/Dell connector which carries the PCIe interface and also USB from the host machine rather than using a standalone USB controller. This allows the Alienware Graphics Amplifier to provide via a single cable four powered USB 3.0 ports. With monitors attached the VGA output is routed externally to those panels, with nothing connected the notebook display gets the output instead. Currently, the only machine that the Alienware Graphics Adaptor connects to is the new Alienware 13 with both shipping in November 2014.

Pricing for the Alienware 13 starts at US $1599 with the Alienware Graphics Amplifier selling for US $299.99. There is currently no Australian pricing for the Alienware Graphics Amplifier listed on the Alienware website.

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Writing Throwback: Halo Wars Preview

I was going through some old documents, and I came across my first written text about video games. It is a preview of Halo Wars on the Xbox 360 which I played at an event being held by Xbox Australia at their Sydney office.

I had the opportunity to play Halo Wars for three hours, and was asked for feedback that Xbox Australia recorded with intentions of using it for promotional material. I have never seen that footage used anywhere, so maybe that "feedback" was intended to be "who has the best soundbite?" Seems no-one did. On to the preview.

Halo Wars Preview

Thursday, February 12 2009

As a console gamer, I never had a chance to play the Real Time Strategy (RTS) genre before and was a bit apprehensive on how Halo Wars would work on a console. This style of gameplay is traditionally only on the PC, so how would it work? Well, very well.

Traditional PC gamers will have to play it for themselves, with most probably not liking this chopped down version of that type of gameplay. For console gamers, this would be an opportunity to dip your toe into the style of gameplay we never really get to sample. Or get done well.

As for the game itself Ensemble Studios have done a great job with the character actions and personalities. They have made it tremendously easy to play on a controller, the thing I was most dreading, and made it with surprisingly engaging gameplay.

The controls are primarily the A and X buttons with each character set possessing a secondary ability activated with the Y button. The campaign features fifteen levels, which I got to play from one to four on heroic difficulty. The first three levels I found were quite easy to complete, but hit a major hurdle on mission four. After only having a short time to sample Halo Wars, it felt like the Artifical Intelligence was actively learning my play style, of which there is none, and was countering it. I acknowledge that this is most likely not the case, but to still get that feeling requires the game to have had a lot of polish.

A few disappointments to note were the fact that the Spartans were not controllable by mission four, but they are playable in later levels. Also, the Achievement Points seemed to be regularly awarded for completing objectives meaning those who play for achievements can unlock a lot quickly, but overall they don't seem to extend the campaigns longevity. That could lead to players playing the single player campaign once and never touching it again, which I feel will be the case.

The group played a few quick multiplayer matches in the 1v1 and 3v3 game modes, with a 2v2 mode being available as well. There are a lot of playable characters for both the UNSC and Covenant, with hints of the Flood making an appearance in the campaign but no confirmation for multiplayer. The maps looked small, but it never felt constricted when playing. A neat gameplay element for multiplayer is the ability to pool resources amongst teammates, which can help players spawned near the enemy which tends to lead to long drawn out skirmishes that limit resource gathering.

Ensemble Studios have created a very slick game designed from the ground up only for the Xbox 360. With my genre of choice primarily being First Person Shooters on both PC and console, I was moved out of my comfort zone. But they did it; they made my transition extremely easy and from what I played made it worthwhile. When I asked if Microsoft was aiming to switch PC players with Halo Wars, I was given a firm "No."

"We are showing players like you what we can create and what a console can do, and to build a variation on the Halo franchise."

The Limited Collectors Edition of Halo Wars will launch with the Mythic Map Pack, but there is no release date for this Downloadable Content for everyone else. When questioned about future DLC packs and the longevity of the game I was told "more DLC will be available soon and expect Halo Wars to be around for years."

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PAX Australia 2014 - Feature

On the 31st of October, 2014 we attended the Penny Arcade Expo, or PAX Australia as it's called, in Melbourne. This is the second PAX Australia we have attended and we approached it the same as the first, we flew into Melbourne from Sydney the night before.

As we didn't have Media Badges people are reluctant to talk to you, which is ok as this is the first event we have filmed anyway. We learned quite a lot and think we can do an even better job next year.

Until then enjoy this mini featurette of the floor during PAX Australia 2014.

Music: "The Great" from "Slam Funk" by "Broke For Free" (CC BY 3.0)

Music: "Make It Drums" from "Bonus Beat Blast 2011" by "Daedelus" (CC BY 3.0)

Music: "Biznezz" from "Sketches" by "Jahzzar" (CC BY-SA 3.0)
No Changes Were Made To "Biznezz" by "Jahzzar"

Music: "Calabash" from "Bonus Beat Blast 2011" by "Co.fee" (CC BY 3.0)

Music: "A002" from "Generic Product" by "Monroeville Music Center" (CC BY 3.0)

Music: "The Perfect Planet" from "Choose Your Own Adventure" by "Monroeville Music Center" (CC BY 3.0)

Music: "Simple Hop" from "Slam Funk" by "Broke For Free" (CC BY 3.0)

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