We've got a special treat for you kiddies this morning, an interview with the president and founder of Falcon Northwest, Kelt Reeves. For the three of you who have never heard of Falcon Northwest or its products, here is a brief overview. They make gaming machines, just gaming machines. They don't make anything else at all. Their only business is to make the fastest gaming computers on the planet - bar none. Any questions? I didn't think so.
Tweak3D: I imagine, due to the nature of your company, that your job as President is a bit broader than most who hold that title. Would you mind telling me a little about what you do at Falcon Northwest?
Kelt: Well I started this company as a one man operation seven years ago, so I have at some point done absolutely everything. These days my main priorities are choosing new products to include in our systems, analyzing prototypes, and I still handle most of the marketing for the company. I am also head game tester :)
Tweak3D: So, you get to test all the games, huh? Which games are currently your favorites? ;)
Kelt: I play a lot of games, and buy way more than I actually play. It's a sickness that eats up free time. Hidden & Dangerous has sucked up way too much time lately. I polished off Drakan in a weekend, which was also pretty good. Currently I'm about halfway through System Shock 2 - great spooky atmosphere in that one.
Tweak3D: What separates your company from custom system builders such as Dell and Gateway? What special features/options/etc. do you offer your customers that these larger companies don't provide?
Kelt: We exclusively build systems for gamers. The mass production companies just don't take gaming seriously, probably because their CEOs have never played a game. Those types of systems are designed solely by how many corners they can cut to make more money, while Falcon is concerned with quality & performance. To give you an example, while both Falcon and Dell use Voodoo 3 cards, 3dfx specially makes a cheaper, Voodoo3 3000-D model for Dell. That's a 125 MHz model that is slower than anything you can buy in the stores. Conversely, 3dfx makes the Falcon Northwest Special Edition Voodoo 3500TV for us, a special 200 MHz implementation that is faster than anything you can buy in the stores. It mainly comes down to our philosophy of only building the best. If a component can't be the best in the areas of speed, reliability and compatibility, it doesn't go into a Falcon.
Tweak3D: In what ways does your company separate itself from other gamer-specific system builders?
Kelt: We don't really know of any other "gamer specific" PC companies. Most of the recent additions you're referring to are just local PC shops that have tried to add gaming lines to their existing operations (although I'm not sure about GamePC). We're the only company I know of that has no local sales, and markets exclusively to gamers. We've also been serving this market since 1992, four years before our first competitor even cropped up. Since then we've seen a ton of them come and go: Zephyr, the NEC Power Player, PC4Play, Optical PC, FirezEdge, Lock and Load... and many others who were exclusively web based. We have met a lot of these companies along the way, but none of them has ever beaten us in a head to head review. There's a big difference between being a company that makes nothing but PCs for gamers and being a PC shop trying to make a buck off the gaming market. Here at Falcon, we work more in the game world than the hardware world. To see what I mean, just take a look at our print advertising. We co-market with the games we love to play like Half-Life, Unreal, Mechwarrior 3, Alien vs. Predator, etc. Most of these other companies' ads are laundry lists of PC components that look exactly like those in Computer Shopper. In fact Dell's ads in CGW are usually the same as their ads in Computer Shopper.
Tweak3D: What companies do you currently consider the biggest competitors to Falcon Northwest?
Kelt: That's easy: Dell, Dell, and Dell. They don't even pretend to make gaming PCs, but they do make a solid PC at a great price. For people who just want a solid business machine, we even recommend them.
Tweak3D: As I was browsing your website, I saw no mention of AMD's new Athlon series of processor - which is thought to be the fastest mainstream CPU on the planet. Is this due to supply problems or some other consideration? Doesn't this put you at a disadvantage when dealing with companies that are already incorporating such processors into their systems?
Kelt: We're already way ahead of most people on this one, but we're still under NDA from AMD on the very advanced systems we have already done. They have all shipped only for magazine reviews, and you'll see what I'm talking about in December issues. As for main line production PCs, you'll see an announcement from us very soon. Right now the CPUs aren't the problem, it's lack of Athlon motherboard support. Currently, MicroStar is the only actual shipping Athlon board - not much of a selection. Several others are announced, and obviously lots of system integrators have announced things too. At Falcon we do things a bit differently in that we actually wait until we get products in and test them all before announcing who we're going with. But you are certainly correct in saying Athlon is the fastest. As soon as we have the fastest motherboard to accompany it, we'll make a formal announcement. It should only be a couple more days.
Tweak3D: In the FAQ (from the website), it states that you can't duplicate the performance of a Mach V system simply by putting together a computer that has identical components. Are you referring to specially configuring each system, or something else entirely?
Kelt: Several vendors have tried "cloning" us, but they lost in the head to heads too. A PC has hundreds of variables that affect performance, and what the components actually are only a few of those variables. We've been doing this a long, long time, and we know how to get the most out of the hardware. Obviously starting with the best ingredients is important, but I liken this to handing the best food ingredients to a world class chef and a to short order cook. Even with the same recipe, you're going to get much better results from someone who knows how to cook them.
Tweak3D: What kind of customizations do you have to make your systems come out ahead of the pack?
Kelt: As I had mentioned earlier, the 3dfx Falcon Special Edition is one way. nVidia & Guillemot have also done a Falcon Northwest Special Edition TnT2 card. It's got special 4.3ns memory, a faster than standard chip, heatsinks on the memory, and some other special tweaks. Other than products especially made for Falcon like those, it's just good old-fashioned technical expertise and rigorous testing. Of course, carrying only the highest quality components makes a big difference. We don't overclock anything, so being able to push a component to its "legal" limit reliably is very important to us.
Tweak3D: How do Mach V gaming systems compare to home grown custom built PC's (such as one a hobbyist would put together)? Are they just as fast, and more importantly, are they just as easy to upgrade?
Kelt: Not to insult the hobbyists out there, but (overclocking aside) they are faster. If anyone could slap together a PC that could beat ours, someone would've taken us out in one of these competitions over the years. We're lucky enough to have the resources to test all the brands of a particular component before we choose one. The components we choose aren't based on someone's say so, we know they are the best for speed, reliability and compatibility. As for upgradeability, it's one of the MACH V series' greatest strengths. We have fantastic repeat business - customers who upgrade their machine on a yearly basis. Nothing is integrated in the MACH V series, so you can always upgrade sound, video, even motherboard with the latest and greatest.
Tweak3D: How much more money is a Falcon Northwest going to cost me than a "comparable" PC from a larger company or an off the shelf? Top of the line, built by hand computers are great for the guy with $3,200 to drop, but what about a guy who's only got $1,800? Can your systems still beat out the competition in the lower price ranges?
Kelt: We're extremely price competitive for high end systems, but we haven't been able to compete the way we want to in the sub $2,000 price range before. That will be changing. Since our MACH V's case, motherboard & power supply cost 3 times as much as the mass production companies', there has been no way we could compete below $2,000 and still keep up the quality we're known for. But just last week we sent off the first prototype of our new "TALON" line of PC's to review. It's the first true high performance sub $2,000 Gaming PC. We were able to manage it because 3dfx designed a motherboard specifically for us with a Voodoo 3 3500 and Aureal Vortex 2 audio on the board. TALON won't be as upgradeable or extreme as our custom MACH V series, but it cuts no corners on gaming performance. Right now we're looking at late October for shipping them, and when you see the configurations you'll be amazed at the value!
Tweak3D: In view of the recent shift towards things that aren't Microsoft, does your company have any plans to support other operating systems, such as Linux?
Kelt: Although the web community has embraced Linux quite well, we have never even had anyone ask for it. It's still a "fringe" operating system, like OS/2 was. Despite its benefits, I think most gamers are more concerned with compatibility. Hopefully it will pick up more steam, but right now the game software companies won't even give you tech support for non-Windows systems.
Thanks Kelt. For more information on their products, etc., check out their website.
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