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Yesterday AMD showed off their super cool Eyefinity technology that’s going to be included on all their new DX11 graphics cards. Check out this video explaining what it is:

Is this cool or what? I don’t know about using 6 monitors to play a first person shooter, but I can tell you that it’s awesome with three screens. As a matter of fact, I have been using three screens for a very long time now via Matrox’s TrippleHead2Go for gaming and productivity. AMD’s DX11 video cards will be available for purchase through MAINGEAR on launch day. Win7 + DX11 + some really cool announcements from us will make this coming October a very exciting month! Stay tuned.

I just read an interview conducted by The New York Times with Asus’ vice chairman Jonathan Tsang and it made me think of how Asus is terribly confused. The company simply has no direction. In my opinion, Asus manufactures excellent computer components, and they should stick to what they do best. Their arrogance kind of reminds me of Sony, a company that had it all but just simply got too greedy and is now paying the consequences.

With statements like: “Our goal is to provide products that are better than Apple’s”, and “We have a product we think is better than the Wii”, Jonathan Tsang seems very conflicted as to what direction he should be driving Asus as a company.

Did you ever hear of that expression: “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you!” well Asus should take a page out of that book. I just recently became aware that Asus plans on “revolutionizing” the boutique pc gaming market with a fully integrated PC – competing directly with those of us who revolutionized it to begin with. Seriously… what are they thinking? Chris Morley sums it up pretty well here. We’ll continue using their motherboards, as long as they are the best solution.   They may not always be the best solution in the future, though. It’s a big incentive for MAINGEAR to start working closer with motherboard manufactures like EVGA, DFI and Gigabyte on future projects.

Just imagine if NVIDIA decided to compete against their partners by selling video cards directly. It would simply cripple their business. Jensen Huang is too smart to make mistakes like that. Maybe Mr. Tsang needs to take some “Business 101” crash courses w/ Mr. Huang.

But besides that, and more importantly, Asus is missing the point of the boutiqe PC.  This market doesn’t need another alienhead computer, or a lower price point – it needs better customer service.  The ownership experience of a MAINGEAR computer is so much more than the sum of the components we integrate.  It’s the before and after the sale support.  It’s being able to talk to your builder on the phone.  It’s knowing that the money you spent on your PC was not just a “take the money and run” transaction for a commodity good, it was a guarantee from us to you that you will be taken care of.

Asus may have more money and higher economies of scale than those of us in the boutique business, but if they can’t bring soul to the game, they’ll find themselves just competiting with all the other same, boring, bloated, commodity PCs.

OK, so in our previous post we stated we were going to give away two of our TWKR CPUs.  If you haven’t read the rules we suggest you do now.

We have two updates for you:

1)  The contest will be held on July 6th, 2009, at 1PM Eastern Standard Time.  We will be tweeting one question.  The first two to answer the question correctly via a reply will win.  If for some crazy reason a bunch of people answer at exactly the same time and we cannot determine from Twitter who actually answered first, the names will be randomly chosen from those who tie for first place.  The original rules apply, you MUST be 1) following us on Twitter @ www.twitter.com/maingear, and 2) RT (retweet) our ORIGINAL status update.  You must do this BEFORE 1PM EST on the 6th.

2)  We’ve received several requests from those outside the US and Canada to be able to participate in this contest.  We want to make this open to you as well.  If you are willing to pay all shipping fees associated, we’ll make sure the CPU is well boxed and ready for pickup by your carrier of choice.  Free ground shipping will be provided for any winner(s) in the US or Canada.  We’re putting a $0 value on these chips as we cannot resell it and cannot get it RMA’d, so no trade-ins or swap-outs available. [Ugh, our lawyers tell us there are certain places we can't legally ship, so void where prohibited, and all that jazz.]

Well, today’s the day that the word is out on the AMD TWKR CPU. As speculated, it’s a high current chip that can take the extreme stresses of Liquid Nitrogen overclocking.

Unfortunately for us, this does nothing for our fully integrated gaming computers as LN2 cooling is not a viable end-user product – it’s an enthusiast tool and a short-term solution.  We were able to get a TWKR up to 4.1GHz with some basic watercooling, however, which is not too shabby at all.

To see the incredible results that a couple of respected review sites acheived in their labs with LN2, check out Legit Reviews and Tom’s Hardware.

So, we’ve decided that we’re going to give away TWO TWKR CPUs.

The rules are simple.

1)  Follow MAINGEAR on twitter @ www.twitter.com/maingear and then RETWEET this status update

2)  Listen on twitter for further instructions today and tomorrow.

3)  Win and we’ll send the CPU to you for free!  (US and Canada only) 7/1 Update: Contest now open to all citizens of Earth – you are responsible for all shipping charges if outside the US or Canada.

Just a little present from us to you.  Thanks for your support.  And thank you, AMD, for supporting MAINGEAR the way you have over the years…this is pretty cool.

We know that we’re reaching a new audience here – the hardcore DIY crowd – all we ask is that you keep us in mind when recommending a gaming PC, custom laptop, or any other custom computer to your friends and family.

Our top-of-the-line gaming PC, the ePhex, has won its 3rd straight Editor’s Choice Award in six months, this time from Maximum PC magazine.  I would urge you to take a look at the August 2009 issue if you haven’t already.

We set new standards in every single benchmark they had.  And while no system they have reviewed as of late was able to break 54 frames per second in their Crysis benchmark, we clocked in at 70.

And it wasn’t just a fast system.  Maximum PC has a gruelling stress-test they put overclocked systems through to make sure they weed out any trailer queens, or systems that may just hang on long enough to post some high scores.

The system we sent them mirrors our “Elite” configuration for the ePhex.  It is unique in the market in that we have developed a custom water-cooling solution that we build from the ground up.  We find the best water blocks, radiators, tubing, and pumps and combine them to cool not only the CPU, but all of the GPUs as well.  With our unique configuration, we utilize two radiators, with a combined surface area of nearly 70 square inches.  This ensures that we can push each component to their max without sacrificing reliability.

The end result?  Well, to quote Maximum PC, “Look out, there’s a new benchmark sheriff in town.”

As I was getting ready to post this information up this morning, I received an e-mail from AMD asking me not to disclose any information detailing the speeds and test results of the TWKR chip. I apologize for this teaser post instead. It seems that AMD does have a plan for this product after all. I will be able to disclose a full report after June 30th. What I can tell you is that the TWKR chip does OC beyond the limits of the 955 BE cpu. Unfortunately, that is also all I can tell you about it. For our test system we’re using the ASUS Crosshair III board and 4GB of Kingston KHX-12800D3K2/4G with a CoolIT Domino A.L.C. cooling unit. I will be giving away one of these special TWKR CPUs to a very lucky winner. Please check back often for instructions on how to enter to win.

Best
Wallace Santos

Hey everyone, just wanted to update you that we’re currently in the process of building up our test bed for TWKR. We didn’t expect the massive amounts of publicity we got, and many are clamoring for benchmarks and results. We’ll do our best to deliver in a timely manner! Keep checking this blog for updates.

Best,

Chris Morley

Till now there was no way for anyone to comfortably enjoy pc gaming in the living room. This is one of the advantages that Xbox 360 and PS3 had over PC Gaming. There just wasn’t that perfect keyboard and mouse that you could comfortably sit down on your couch and game for hours with.

John Landino, Phantom CEO, personally came by and dropped off a few production units of their Lapboard for me to check out, and I must say that I’m very impressed. There’s just something really cool about playing FarCry 2 from my couch on my Samsung HDTV at home. We’ll be selling these w/ our soon to be announced AXESS G media center. Check out the pics.

Our good friends at AMD just dropped off some fresh TWKR Black Edition Phenom II chips at our nerdery. Goodfellas didn’t tell us much about the new mysterious part. We’ll have to throw it in a MAINGEAR PC w/ a little bit of AOD to see what these are all about. Stay tuned.