HP Firebird 802 Performance Gaming Desktop PC

Jun 9 2009 - When HP initially released the Firebird 802 compact gaming desktop, it had a price tag of roughly $1699. Now officially pricing is more around $1300 but at this price it still is a bit too much. Thankfully, the system can be found at some retailers for much less. The system is a mix of desktop and laptop components that offer decent gaming performance but it falls quite short of traditional desktops. What users are instead buying is a smaller form factor case that is very well designed and operates with very little noise.

Jun 9 2009 - Unlike many full sized performance desktops, the Firebird 802 is a smaller gaming desktop system supposedly designed for high performance from HP's Voodoo computers division. The small case certainly makes it much more compact than a traditional desktop system as well as run very quiet, something desktop performance systems typically have problems with.

Performance for the system is not up to par of the more traditional desktop systems. It does use a desktop Intel Core 2 Quad 9400 quad core processor but this falls short of the performance from even the lowest Core i7 processors that the majority of performance systems are based around now. This combined with the 4GB of DDR2 means that it will fall behind most gaming desktops.

Now, the system is capable of PC gaming. This comes from the fact that is uses two mobile NVIDIA GeForce 9800M S graphics processors in an SLI configuration. This allows it to play games up to the 1920x1680. The big problem is that these are mobile parts. It means they use less overall power and run cooler than traditional desktop cards. The big downside though is that it is nearly impossible to purchase aftermarket MXM based graphics processors essentially preventing any graphics upgrades.

Storage has similar problems because they are based on mobile parts. The 500GB of total storage space is decent, but this is achieved through the use of two 250GB drives that spin at 5400rpm. This results in slower overall data access compared to desktop drives. The optical drive also uses a slow loading laptop drive that only runs at the 8x speed compared to desktop drives running much faster.

Still, if you want a decent small gaming platform, the Firebird 802 can be an excellent option if you can find it available at one of many retailers that offer it for under $1000.