Alienware Area-51 ALX Desktop Ignites Better Performance for FlameGoat.net’s Game Broadcasts

Flamegoat.net is a gaming-oriented Web site that provides its audience with recent news, reviews and forums for gaming discussion. While hot gaming topics make up the majority of the site’s content, Flamegoat was launched to bring awareness to Gamers 4 Life, a charitable organization. The foundation, created in 2007, describes itself as “a group of gamers bonded together and dedicated to helping St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital,” in Memphis, Tenn. With a large following on www.justin.tv, the site’s founders hope to bring attention back to the main site and, in turn, transfer that attention over to their charitable cause.

Feeding the Flame

While Flamegoat.net is where it all started, the site’s channel on justin.tv is where Flamegoat interest took off. The Flamegoat TV channel hosts live broadcasts of gamers playing PC and console games complete with live commentary, chat room and archived videos. The adult-oriented, no-holds-barred channel features PC games like Crysis and Warhammer Online and console games like Metal Gear Solid 4 or even GoldenEye 007 for those nostalgic gamers. With more than 400,000 views-and-climbing, the Flamegoat channel is one of the most popular gaming channels on justin.tv.

Broadcasting a PC game is pretty taxing to any CPU. When Flamegoat’s Matt Burks would broadcast live PC games from home, he was forced to use a desktop to play the game and a notebook to broadcast the action to Flamegoat TV. While the console games were fairly easy to broadcast, the graphic-intensive PC broadcasts had graphics cards being pushed to extreme limitations. System crashes and overheated computers are a common occurrence among live broadcasters operating without the proper equipment.

“Most other casters are using off-the-shelf, mid-range computers,” Burks said. “While they can still broadcast, their overall quality is extremely low. PC broadcasting is so CPU-intensive. No one wants to see the game broadcast at about seven frames per second. That’s a headache. You need something with better performance, not something just thrown together on an assembly line.”

While Burks’ two-computer broadcast configuration steadily handled its broadcasting tasks, there had to be a more efficient way. Alienware and its Area-51 ALX desktop proved there was.

Alienware ALX Desktop Does it All

Burks’ new Alienware system had exactly what he needed to turn a slow PC broadcast on its head. Inside the ALX’s Space Black chassis lived an Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme QX9770 3.2GHz processor, a Dual 2GB ATI® Radeon ® HD with CrossFireX™ and Quad GPU Technology, a 4GB Corsair Dominator overclocked dual-channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1,600MHz, NVIDIA® nForce® 790i Ultra SLI™ Motherboard and an ALX High-Performance Liquid Cooling system. Burks had more raw power in one machine than he had ever witnessed, and all he could think about was what it would take to make the computer crash.

“I’ll admit that I tried to break it,” Burks said. “As a developer, I use it for everything – web design, 3-D modeling and animation, video rendering and broadcast purposes. The ALX took everything I threw at it. Alienware told me to overclock and push the limits, and I did. It’s running at 4HZ stable. It’s amazing how well it runs.”

ALX Delivers Best Broadcast Resolutions

Burks’ two-computer broadcast setup was put out to pasture with the ALX’s arrival. He no longer needed two machines when the ALX could outperform both combined. Burks was able to play and capture the most graphic-intensive games while broadcasting on the Flamegoat TV channel. No crashes. No heat issues. No seven frames per second headaches. Even Burks found it hard to believe that PC broadcasting could be this easy.

“To be honest, I didn’t expect it to handle this well,” he said. “Neither my desktop or notebook was strong enough to capture video and handle audio and effects on its own. When I brought in the ALX, it blew me away. I was able to handle both tasks without a problem. If I’m capturing someone else’s video and broadcasting for them, I was able to work and do other things with the ALX at the same time, which was unimaginable before. I was running Crysis on high settings during the capturing process, and it was running at beautiful speeds.”

After using the ALX to broadcast on the channel, the Flamegoat audience began to take notice. Often, they ask what kind of system is broadcasting the game. Burks would let the viewers in on his new Alienware system.

“The audience really began to notice when I began broadcasting actual design work,” Burk said. “I was working on a character to help teach 3-D modeling and livecapturing at the same time. I was broadcasting at full resolution. Although the broadcasts are typically 320 x 240, the Flamegoat viewers could pop out the window and watch in 1680 x 1050 resolution, which is impossible on any other Flamegoat system. Everyone watching at the time thought it was amazing. I’m pretty sure I was the first to ever broadcast over a 640 x 480 resolution on justin.tv.”

The bigger the Flamegoat community gets, the more awareness is brought to Burks’ dream of helping sick children continue to receive the medical treatment they need at St. Jude’s. While he loves gaming, he knows there’s more to life than performing a melee attack on an online opponent. He knows that if gamers can spend $60 on a video game, then surely they can donate a dollar to a good cause. Hopefully, Flamegoat won’t have any difficulty broadcasting that message.