Wake Technical Community College Students Get Schooled With Alienware Desktops

Wake Tech Community College, nestled in the foothills of Raleigh, N.C., is a technologically oriented school where students, both young and old, can get an early start on the jobs of tomorrow. Wake Tech's emphasis on the tech-based curriculum isn't coincidental. Located in Research Triangle Park – between North Carolina's major universities in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill – the community college makes up just a small part of the 7,000 acres inside the region. The other portion largely consists of high-tech research and development centers, including more than 30 gaming studios.

A few years ago, Wake Tech students approached the administration about creating courses in game development. With collegiate gaming studies concentrated mainly on the West Coast and Florida regions, the choice to add a Simulation and Game Development program to its curriculum made Wake Tech a hub for young students wanting to pursue a career in the gaming industry.

The Situation: Waking up on the right side of the bed

With the help of a three-year National Science Foundation grant, Wake Tech launched its program and 50 students immediately enrolled. It wasn't long before the gaming industry took notice and helped the college develop a world-class curriculum.

But while Wake Tech's program was gaining momentum, there was something slowing it down. Running game applications such as Maya, Gamebryo and Unreal, among others, the development lab's computers were unable to handle the average video-gaming output without crashing. Fortunately, they didn't have to contend with that problem for long.

Walter Rotenberry, an instructor at Wake Tech, and the rest of the staff knew exactly what was needed. Their ideal computer lab consisted of 25 enhanced-gaming computers equipped with an optimal graphics card, an AMD processor and enough memory and disk space to be able to handle all gaming applications without stressing the system out. A state contract limited Wake Tech to a few computer manufacturers, which was unfortunate since Rotenberry and the rest of the Simulation and Game Development staff were smitten with Alienware. Luckily, Dell – which had recently acquired Alienware – was on the state's short list.

The Answer: An Alienware invasion!

Wake Tech was able to purchase 25 of the Alienware Aurora 7500 desktops equipped with AMD Athlon 64 X2 processors. The desktops had plenty of room to store all applications and projects without the fear of crashing. Also, the Nvidia 8800 graphics card with 768M of RAM graphics cards provided a crisp picture for every student.

"With Alienware's reputation in the gaming industry, selecting the 7500 desktops was an excellent way to attract students to the program," Rotenberry said. "Most students dream about being able to operate on a system with half the capability of an Alienware, so for Wake Tech to outfit the new game lab with these high-performing computers, it was something special."

The Results: Alienware remains at the head of the class

Student reaction has been just what Rotenberry and the rest of the faculty suspected: phenomenal. More than 200 students are now enrolled in the program and Wake Tech instructors say the students are impressed with how much better Alienware products handle Maya, Gamebryo and Unreal applications, among many others. Likewise, instructors no longer have to worry about frustrated students complaining about having to restart the computer or how slow the software was moving.

"When we started the program, we were working with brand new computers, but when we tried to render the software, it would crash or take hours to perform," Rotenberry said. "Our new Alienware Aurora 7500 desktops can complete the task in minutes. Switching over to Alienware has increased productivity and given students the ultimate learning environment."

Wake Tech customized its 7500s with 2 Gigabytes of memory, but the faculty wanted to prepare for the future. As soon as 4 Gigabytes were available, planning was underway for the budget to include an upgrade within the next year.

"We want to keep the Alienware desktops for awhile, and the upgrade will give us expandability toward the future," Rotenberry said.

In the summer of 2007, Wake Tech gave high school students a crash course in game development at a digital game summer camp and invited game enthusiasts of all ages to its Digital Game Xpo and Conference. The DGXpo was a chance for students to showcase their talent and allowed others to play the games they created in class. In addition, the college had a chance to show off its facility to leaders in the gaming industry and prospective students. Wake Tech had a team of three freshman place second in the Designers Showcase with their game, "Isosphere," a non-violent sphere shooting game.

In the world of education and gaming, positive feedback and increased productivity helped put Alienware, and Wake Tech, at the head of the class.