Commodore Unveils New PC Line
03.15.07

By Mark Hachman



Commodore Gaming has emerged from the shadows to announce its first line of gaming PCs, together with some flashy new cases.

The Commodore brand, which was purchased and relaunched by the Dutch firm Yeahronimo Ventures in 2005, now includes four boutique PCs: the high-end Commodore XX, followed by the GX, GS, and G. Prices for the PCs were not available, as the site will begin selling them next month.

Commodore Gaming faces a slew of boutique PC competitors, although most have been snapped up by OEMs looking to add some cachet to their brand. VoodooPC was acquired by Hewlett-Packard, for example, while Dell purchased Alienware in May 2006.

In a nod to the company's history, all of the systems come preloaded with a Commodore64 emulator and 50 "classic" games, the company said.

Commodore Lander Skin
Commodore was famous for introducing the Commodore64 computer in 1982, which revolutionized the personal computer market, due to company's scheme of vertically integrating, which gave it access to its own semiconductor manufacturing facilities. In 1985, Commodore bought Amiga Corp., and brought its Commodore Amiga to market. Both the C64 and Amiga continue to live on through enthusiast sites, software emulators, and used-hardware sites.

The Commodore XX includes an Intel Core2 Extreme quad-core QX6700 microprocessor, an ASUS P5N32-E nForce 680i SLI motherboard, 4 Gbytes of Corsair memory, a pair of Nvidia 8800 GTX SLI graphics cards, and three hard drives: two 150GB 10,000 RPM SATA drives arranged in a frowned-upon RAID 0 configuration, and a 7,200-RPM 500-Gbyte RAID 1 drive.

Commodore's Blue Street Skin
The GX includes a Intel Q6600 quad-core processor, 2 Gbytes of memory, and a single Nvidia 8800GTX 320-Mbyte graphics card. The GS includes a Core Duo E6600 processor, 2 Gbytes of memory, and an Nvidia 8800 GTS card,along with a single 320-Gbyte hard drive. The Commodore G includes an Intel Core2 Duo E6320, 2 Gbytes of memory, and an Nvidia 7900 GS graphics card.

Users can also select from an array of artistic cases, with various designs, or C-kins, painted upon them. Commodore said that its cases were designed so that the front panels could be opened and closed without needing to remove any USB cords.

In a nod to the company's history, all of the systems come preloaded with a Commodore64 emulator and 50 "classic" games, the company said.