NVIDIA’s New Battlebox PCs Set to Eat 4K Gaming For Breakfast

Updated: October 2, 2013

As Valve unfolds its plans for their own SteamOS they also have been delving into another market as well and that is the PC business. Although they are not actually getting into the hardware side of things as of yet they are working with many companies to bring the “Steam Machine” concept right into your living room. NVIDIA may not be on your console platform, but has that slowed them down one iota? No way as the mean in Green and Black are focusing their attention in a market they know well. NVIDIA is now working with ORGIN and other top notch building houses to bring you their “BattleBox” PC that offers no compromise 4K gaming, but will it be priced like a Rolls Royce?

It seems NVIDIA has actually ventured beyond just the graphics card side of things and is now expanding their territory to include a line of PCs that will all be geared for living room entertainment systems. This could work out very well for NVIDIA as most gamers use Steam to play their games and unless forced to go elsewhere Steam is the first choice for gamers making this a strategically smart move for NVIDIA. Each different system in the new “BattleBox” line rocks a minimum of a pair of NVIDIA’s high-end GeForce Titan or GTX 780 video cards running in SLI, paired with overclocked Intel Core i5 or i7 processors and tremendous amounts of RAM to bring forth the gaming. The systems are designed to provide 4K-resolution gaming and that takes a lot of power.

These systems are rumored to pump out an impressive 45 to 60 frames per second at 4K-resolution with super-high detail settings and all of NVIDIA’s proprietary bells and whistle things like PhysX and TXAA anti-aliasing will be fully enabled. This is obviously a retaliation move to rub AMD noses in, as these systems will blow away any console that is even on paper at this point in time as no console will be able to pump out the pixels like the “BattleBox” will be able to, leaving AMD and its consoles in the dust. Now there is always a downside to the good things, and this time it is the price, as NVIDIA’s new boutique rigs will start off at the $2000.00 price point, which when compared to the $500.00 or so you might spend on a console seems very daunting indeed. If you want to get real crazy some pimped out systems like the Digital Storm Aventum II are rumored to cost an excess of $10,000.

Another thing to consider is this: The price of a 4K monitor that right now is overtly expensive and not ready for the masses, making 4K gaming a dream until you can purchase the appropriate monitor. That does mean that you cannot game on your other 1920X1080 or 2560X1440 monitors or 3 of them in surround mode so all is not a waste, but this is not 4K and that seems to be the big push on the ‘BattleBox to get our attention lock. For now this all sounds really good, but extreme pricing and the absence of affordable 4K monitors make it more of a dream machine that anything actually affordable right now, although I am sure those with disposable cash will surely hop on the bandwagon from the onset, but most of us are not in that situation. There is no doubt in my mind that these will certainly blow any console graphics right out of the water, but at the cost they sell for I feel it will be a limited market. I think most of my readers are going to be like umm yes, but hell no as they can just go build their own personal Steam machine for a fraction of the cost. Thanks for reading tech Of Tomorrow. So what do you think of these newly proposed systems? Are they a winner or just too much money for the common man? Let us know in the comments below.

Source: PC World

Guest

I sure hope it’s going to be priced correctly.
crazysymbols

I hope they’ll bring down the price. The cost for the titan is already way too much, so first they’ll have to bring down that price. AMD are wiping the floor with NVIDIA and unless they pull something quick, they’re not going to last very long.
- Christopher Burgos
  
  amd is not wiping the floor with nvidia. Where did you even get that idea?
  - crazysymbols
    
    That they have a new series of GPUs that are going to be much cheaper than NVIDIAs cards of equal performance. Also, they’ve severely slashed the prices of their 7000 series GPUs. But, I did write that comment before the rumours of NVIDIA slashing their prices soon.
    - Christopher Burgos
      
      I saw the price drop, I take it more as a sign of desperation to compete, since nvidia has been dominating the market. These cards are coming out slightly cheaper and on par you say but extremely late for on par performance. we’ve had 700 series for a while now. Titan still better in some regards than amds new flagship
      - crazysymbols
        
        I didn’t say it was on par performance. I said it was cheaper than NVIDIA GPUs of equal performance. The 290x is better than the Titan and 780 (10-30%). It’s less of a sign of desperation to compete as it is a semi-late blow against NVIDIA. AMD and NVIDIA, as well as Intel all trade blows every now and again, that’s the nature of the business with such heavy competition. If you want to get out on top, you have to have some sort of desperation. I think, don’t quote me, the titan ultra is coming out next year. Plus the 790 and 800 series. That could be NVIDIA’s successful blow against AMD this round, or it could be extremely overpriced like the current Titan.
      - Christopher Burgos
        
        Well keep track of the numbers and let me know how AMD is doing. So far poorly. Remember these guys are losing money yearly.
      - crazysymbols
        
        AMD and Nvidia are doing well. Especially with the ATI card in the upcoming consoles and the AMD CPU. They will gain performance in optimisation vs Nvidia and their current octo-core CPUs will gain popularity as they become needed to run next-gen games. AMD are doing well, Nvidia are also doing really well with their Titan now at £770 on Amazon (previously £1000), and more price-cuts going to happen soon. Nvidia are fighting back, well I might add, and actually may beat AMD this time as their 290X is more expensive than expected. I withdraw my previous statement of AMD wiping the floor with Nvidia, let’s just say that at this moment, they have a partial upper hand.
g0ggy

I really don’t see the point in using a system that is built for potential future technology.

I mean, you will have to wait either way, so why would you spend your money NOW on something that will only be available later?

You really shouldn’t buy these overkill builds: you save money and you will have much better services and optimised hardware when 4K is actually a reachable thing.
- CatDealer89
  
  The people buying them i don’t think are too worried about 10,000$ being considered enough money to save, if they are thinking of spending that on a system thenim sure they can afford to do so regardless of whether it will be cheaper in 5 years or not.
  - g0ggy
    
    It doesn’t matter if these people have the money to waste or not.
    
    It’s still wasting money and especially if you are a rich person you should appreciate money much more, be careful with it and spend it effectively.
    
    Being rich is not an excuse for being stupid. You just can’t justify such a purchase at the moment except for bragging rights and that would just show how little of a person you are.
    
    Would you buy an expensive car that you will only be able to drive in 5 years? Not only that in those 5 years there will be BETTER cars that are cheaper than the one you can buy now.
    
    I certainly wouldn’t buy that.
    - Christopher Burgos
      
      er I’m pretty sure there are 4k monitors and TVs on the market, and a few games that can be played at 4k resolution. what are you talking about 5 years from now it will be useable? When you work for your money you are free to do whatever it is that makes you happy. Enjoying higher end technology before the masses can is far from stupid.
      - g0ggy
        
        Do you even know how much a 4K monitor costs? Not only that, their latency is horrible.
      - Christopher Burgos
        
        no but I work for Sony and I know that a 55″ 4k TV is running $3500 compared to the $5500 it was running a few months ago. That is the cost of what the monitor is going for, and content exists for it. Really not as expensive as you’re making it out to be. I know people are buying more expensive computer hardware than that, and not even utilizing it lol. You’re not one to really argue 4k with me, my company has been doing it for 10 years, especially concerning the projectors you watch your movies on in theatre.
      - g0ggy
        
        “Not as expensive as you are making it out to be”
        
        Are you shitting me? $3.5k for a monitor? Son, I think you don’t know the value of money at all when arguing that a 4K monitor and a super gaming PC together for $13.500 are worth the money.
        
        You said it yourself, a few months ago a 4K monitor costed $2000 more. You are also neglecting the latency issues that most 4K monitors have at the moment.
        
        Why would you buy a 4K monitor now when it is going to cost $1000 in the near future with more services and affordable processing power to support it?
        
        Also, your work experience doesn’t seem to help you at all.
        
        This is not a value purchase. All you can do with it, if you buy this set-up, is bragging and nothing else. It’s like buying an overly expensive car. My car will get me from A to B just like yours, but I am going to spend a lot less money than you are.
    - noone
      
      Hi Mr g0ggy, to be honest, why the fuck shoulf you care about that matter??? Ì they have money, and like I said, THEIR MONEY, not yours, then why đi you call them stupid for spending their money??? They have money, they use it however they want, and lets me tell you this, they should be smarter than you, and make alot of money from their job so they can make that much money to spend on that computer. My your own business. And 1 more thing, because you are poor right now so you talking sh** like that, if you are rich like those people, who know what you gonna do? Think about yourself before call the other people stupid. Mr Smarty.
Kinades

They will definitely be niche products, 2.000$ is overkill for all but a very small number of hardcore PC gamers. I doubt that most would spend more than 1,500 dollars on a gaming PC.
- Brandon
  
  I spent about $2,000 on my system personally, but it’s also a work system so that extra cost was justified. The gaming crowd is extremely small compared to the rest of the computer industry.
  
  These pre-built systems are always a waste of money in my opinion, unless you simply can’t be asked to build it yourself, or you are buying a Professional Server/Workstation.
  
  Like HD before it, 4K eventually will be cheap enough for the average consumer. 4K gaming however is a massive leap ahead in terms of how much raw-power you need to run your games. I have a 2560×1440 monitor (2K), and my 7970 can barely handle Crysis 3 @ High.
  
  I don’t think we will see 4K become mainstream in the gaming computer market until a few GPU generations down the line.
  - Ricky Zackovitch
    
    Thats normal, Crysis 3 might be a very demanding game but in my opinions, The Witcher 2 with Ubersampling is even more beast. I tested it on my right on 1080p max out with Ubersampling with 1 GTX 780, and its only achieve 47FPS average!!!! Only when I turn on my second GTX 780 then I got a stable 60FPS experience. So imagine what kind of hardware are require to run 4K gaming !!!!
  - Christopher Burgos
    
    I’m sure if optimized properly for 4k gaming hardware limitations won’t seem so extreme. Right now im not sure many devs are even thinking about 4k. Consoles are still trying to profit off of 720p (ps3 / 360) while next gens that arent even released yet are aiming at 1080.
  - CatDealer89
    
    Im still rockin a 560 lol. and im still getting great FPS on high 1080P. I can’t see myself upgrading the GPU for around 2 more years.
    - The Jackal
      
      I’m running a GTX550TI ^_^
- CatDealer89
  
  2,000 is not a whole lot. I think most gamers spend from 1000,-2000$ on a first rig. and a few go into the 3-5K range.
Darko

Can battlebox play PS3/X-box 360 titles? If not, then it’s pointless to buy it. Also consoles are 4 less expensive. It’s hardware is already outdated bx by today’s hardware standards and it will become completely obsolete in 6-10 years assuming thats the console-life of the new-gen consoles judging from the previous console. But by then, the battle-box will also be outdated so there’s really no difference, plus they will be optimizing every game for console to work as smooth as possible with best possible graphics. Which is work that devs do only on consoles and not on PC’s. So, yeah, if you ‘re a gamer then go for console, if you ‘re a gamer that also uses computers for work and miscallenous other stuff then by all means, go for the PC.
- CatDealer89
  
  you are a fool.
- The Jackal
  
  Well let me tell you something, Sunny, they are not ‘made to play console games’, they are made to play PC games, so no, they are not pointless. And they will become obsolete in 6 – 10 years by PC’s standards, NOT by a console’s. When your ‘PS4′ and your ‘XBOX ONE’ arrives, we will still have the upper hand. Also, PC games are receiving the same attention, and in most cases more, in terms of performance optimization. There are a whole bunch of new technologies that have been designed specifically for PC, which create all new effects and enhancements for directX in 3D programs.
  
  “So, yeah”
  
  If you’re a 10 year old kid who thinks he knows everything because he goes to an expensive primary school and all of his fat friends play consoles, Go the fuck ahead. Just don’t post this kind of shit on our website, if you know whats best for you.
Ricky Zackovitch

The only things that I am interesting in is that Sexy PCI Bridge !!!!!
Mathijs

Where can I get an SLI bridge like that??!!
Geoffrey Chen

Origin is a big waste of money. They are the average “make you pay $2000 for nothing” companies where you can build for much cheaper. Or you can get from a cheaper website I found was Xidax .com prices are literally about $100 more than building yourself with lifetime warranty for everything. I’m kinda promoting them cuz I hate to see gamers ripped off for not knowing much.