ChrisMorley
01-09-2011, 12:58 AM
Every now and then I have the privilege of just being there. I get to watch new and wonderful technology come to market. But even more, as an active participant, I help plant this technology. I plant it in our products, I seed it with the press. This is what I do, this is my profession, and I love it. And I feel blessed every day to be at a company like MAINGEAR where our partners trust us with their technology and our reputation for quality and performance has allowed us to rise through the ranks and I get to work with others who will cultivate and nurture this technology through to your hands.
In our way, we at MAINGEAR shape the way any given technology is presented to you, our customers. We get it early. We give our feedback. Sometimes we even have a hand in how it takes shape, but ultimately we decide where it goes, how much we charge for it, how we market it, and what we send out for reviews.
And you’ll begin to see trends. You’ll see certain configurations pop up at the usual review venues – maybe we’ve identified certain configurations that strike a chord with a reviewer. But most often you’ll find the also-rans sending in their attempts to copy our award winning systems. But you’ll definitely be able to identify patterns if you look hard enough, and if the technology stagnates for long enough.
I think that’s where we are now in the CPU world. In a binary world of P55 or X58 chipsets. Of affordable or performance. Of a spoiler with AMD – there are certain customers who are well suited to their value proposition, but you don’t find many at MAINGEAR.
And it gets confusing! It’s difficult keeping up with 3 different SKUs for each of our models – Performance, Enthusiast, Extreme for each SHIFT, X-Cube, Vybe, or F131. It can be confusing, at first glance, trying to decide if a P55 or X58 chipset, or an AMD platform is going to give you the best performance for your dollar. When you’re not at the high end or at the low end, but somewhere in between – what do you buy?
And that’s why what we’re doing today is so special. Because we really are in a golden age of desktop performance, price, and power efficiency. Tablets are nifty, and they’re great gadgets – but I work at my desktop. I work hard. And I can play hard. I can play in 3D. I can play across three screens at resolutions way beyond 1080p. And I can make headshots – on purpose – with a keyboard and a mouse. I love my PC. I love my desktop. And what we’re going to do is going to make you fall in love, too.
With the introduction of Intel’s next generation, 32nm CPU architecture, also known as "Sandy Bridge," we’re making the most drastic, company-wide changes to our lineup since the SHIFT launched in 2009.
To us it’s drastic, but perhaps to you it’ll just make sense. Because that’s what our goal is – to have our products make sense, and for them to speak to you, eliminating the confusion as to what will deliver you a truly exceptional experience.
You are either a Stock or Super Stock customer and you will know it the first time you browse through our new desktop product lineup.
Our customers fall in one of two categories: either they want performance at any cost or they want performance at a price. And we have tried to balance catering to both of these types of customers.
Typically the latter will start off a phone call with "I’m not a gamer, but…" And that "but" is followed by a profession of love for our products, an affinity for our stellar reputation, and more often than not a tale of woe involving some multi-national commodity builder. These customers don’t need 3-way GTX 580s. Unless you tell them they don’t know that their motherboard is built with military-class components and has 100% solid capacitors from Japan. And sometimes these customers can get overwhelmed by all the choices, many of which just aren’t for them.
Conversely, the customer that is looking for the benchmark-busting configurations we’re known for is going to raise an eyebrow at seeing integrated graphics, or anything that doesn’t cost as much as a small Hyundai.
And that’s why we’ve taken our successful Super Stock program that we launched on the SHIFT last year for those customers that wanted that last bleeding edge of performance, customization, and prestige, and have expanded it to the rest of our desktop line.
Now, for customers who want water-cooling, overclocking, multiple graphics cards, premium memory, and SSD boot drives, we’ve got the SHIFT Super Stock, the F131 Super Stock, the Vybe Super Stock, and the X-Cube Super Stock.
And by now you already know if you want a Super Stock version of these systems – I was right, wasn’t I?
And you probably already know if you’re more in the market for a Stock system. And we want to make sure that we have the right and critical mix of price and performance for you.
That’s the beautiful thing about the all-new 2011 Intel Core architecture. There’s something for everyone. We’ve put nearly a dozen motherboards though their paces here at MAINGEAR, and the entire product stack from Intel. We’ve poured over the benchmarks, analyzed the numbers, and have come to an amazing conclusion:
Sandy Bridge can satisfy all of our customers.
Want a great machine under $1000 that’s going to manage your HD home movies, pictures, music, and data? A Stock Vybe with a Core i5 2300 (four core, 2.8GHz) is more computer than you could imagine you could get.
Want a fantastic 3-way system optimized for NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround? Try a SHIFT Super Stock with a Core i7 2600K (4-core, 8-thread at 3.4GHz) overclocked and watercooled at 5GHz. Yes. Five freaking gigahertz.
You see, by picking the right components – all the way down to the motherboards – we can craft a performance profile at any price from under $1,000 up to $10,000, and one that is markedly different as you pay more or less – all with Sandy Bridge components at the heart of it.
And that’s the beauty of it. One technology, two types of customers, 100% satisfaction.
Stay tuned over the next couple of days as I post detailed performance results to show you why Sandy Bridge has replaced all of our consumer desktop configuration choices.
In our way, we at MAINGEAR shape the way any given technology is presented to you, our customers. We get it early. We give our feedback. Sometimes we even have a hand in how it takes shape, but ultimately we decide where it goes, how much we charge for it, how we market it, and what we send out for reviews.
And you’ll begin to see trends. You’ll see certain configurations pop up at the usual review venues – maybe we’ve identified certain configurations that strike a chord with a reviewer. But most often you’ll find the also-rans sending in their attempts to copy our award winning systems. But you’ll definitely be able to identify patterns if you look hard enough, and if the technology stagnates for long enough.
I think that’s where we are now in the CPU world. In a binary world of P55 or X58 chipsets. Of affordable or performance. Of a spoiler with AMD – there are certain customers who are well suited to their value proposition, but you don’t find many at MAINGEAR.
And it gets confusing! It’s difficult keeping up with 3 different SKUs for each of our models – Performance, Enthusiast, Extreme for each SHIFT, X-Cube, Vybe, or F131. It can be confusing, at first glance, trying to decide if a P55 or X58 chipset, or an AMD platform is going to give you the best performance for your dollar. When you’re not at the high end or at the low end, but somewhere in between – what do you buy?
And that’s why what we’re doing today is so special. Because we really are in a golden age of desktop performance, price, and power efficiency. Tablets are nifty, and they’re great gadgets – but I work at my desktop. I work hard. And I can play hard. I can play in 3D. I can play across three screens at resolutions way beyond 1080p. And I can make headshots – on purpose – with a keyboard and a mouse. I love my PC. I love my desktop. And what we’re going to do is going to make you fall in love, too.
With the introduction of Intel’s next generation, 32nm CPU architecture, also known as "Sandy Bridge," we’re making the most drastic, company-wide changes to our lineup since the SHIFT launched in 2009.
To us it’s drastic, but perhaps to you it’ll just make sense. Because that’s what our goal is – to have our products make sense, and for them to speak to you, eliminating the confusion as to what will deliver you a truly exceptional experience.
You are either a Stock or Super Stock customer and you will know it the first time you browse through our new desktop product lineup.
Our customers fall in one of two categories: either they want performance at any cost or they want performance at a price. And we have tried to balance catering to both of these types of customers.
Typically the latter will start off a phone call with "I’m not a gamer, but…" And that "but" is followed by a profession of love for our products, an affinity for our stellar reputation, and more often than not a tale of woe involving some multi-national commodity builder. These customers don’t need 3-way GTX 580s. Unless you tell them they don’t know that their motherboard is built with military-class components and has 100% solid capacitors from Japan. And sometimes these customers can get overwhelmed by all the choices, many of which just aren’t for them.
Conversely, the customer that is looking for the benchmark-busting configurations we’re known for is going to raise an eyebrow at seeing integrated graphics, or anything that doesn’t cost as much as a small Hyundai.
And that’s why we’ve taken our successful Super Stock program that we launched on the SHIFT last year for those customers that wanted that last bleeding edge of performance, customization, and prestige, and have expanded it to the rest of our desktop line.
Now, for customers who want water-cooling, overclocking, multiple graphics cards, premium memory, and SSD boot drives, we’ve got the SHIFT Super Stock, the F131 Super Stock, the Vybe Super Stock, and the X-Cube Super Stock.
And by now you already know if you want a Super Stock version of these systems – I was right, wasn’t I?
And you probably already know if you’re more in the market for a Stock system. And we want to make sure that we have the right and critical mix of price and performance for you.
That’s the beautiful thing about the all-new 2011 Intel Core architecture. There’s something for everyone. We’ve put nearly a dozen motherboards though their paces here at MAINGEAR, and the entire product stack from Intel. We’ve poured over the benchmarks, analyzed the numbers, and have come to an amazing conclusion:
Sandy Bridge can satisfy all of our customers.
Want a great machine under $1000 that’s going to manage your HD home movies, pictures, music, and data? A Stock Vybe with a Core i5 2300 (four core, 2.8GHz) is more computer than you could imagine you could get.
Want a fantastic 3-way system optimized for NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround? Try a SHIFT Super Stock with a Core i7 2600K (4-core, 8-thread at 3.4GHz) overclocked and watercooled at 5GHz. Yes. Five freaking gigahertz.
You see, by picking the right components – all the way down to the motherboards – we can craft a performance profile at any price from under $1,000 up to $10,000, and one that is markedly different as you pay more or less – all with Sandy Bridge components at the heart of it.
And that’s the beauty of it. One technology, two types of customers, 100% satisfaction.
Stay tuned over the next couple of days as I post detailed performance results to show you why Sandy Bridge has replaced all of our consumer desktop configuration choices.