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Monday 19th May 2008

Fatal1ty: I build all my own PCs

Posted at: Monday 19th May 2008 by James Morris

The world's most famous gamer sat down with Custom PC on a recent visit to the UK to talk gaming groupies, the inexorable rise of the console and why it's still best to build your own PC

Fatal1ty

Jonathan ‘Fatal1ty’ Wendel spends a lot of time on the road. In fact, he claims to have seen his home in Kansas City for only six weeks in the last year. On the Friday we caught up with him, he had just arrived in the UK for the Championship Gaming Series’ 2008 UK / EU Qualifier and Draft – which also handily coincided with the launch of Creative’s new Titanium Fatal1ty range of Sound Blaster X-Fi audio cards. Today, he is already on a plane to California.

Of course, you would expect Fatal1ty to have glowing things to say about products branded with his name. Interestingly, Wendel’s main benefit from his X-Fi card isn’t its much-feted hardware audio effects acceleration, but CMSS-3D, which provides 3D audio effects even when wearing headphones. ‘If I was using on-board sound, I reckon I’d get about 10 per cent less frags,’ he explained. ‘I wouldn’t be able to hear where my opponents are so easily.’

Our conversation covered much more than the edge the new cards will give his frag ratio, however. For a start, it turns out Wendel is a true PC enthusiast, and constructs all his own systems. ‘My first rig used Abit’s BE6 with a Celeron 300A clocked to 450MHz,’ he explains. ‘Then I got a Celeron 800 and ran that at 1,066MHz.’ He has recently built a brand new system, although was a little cagey about its contents. We think it’s safe to predict it contains quite a few Fatal1ty-branded components, however.

The professional gaming lifestyle is also starting to take on some of the trappings of more mainstream endeavours. ‘Yeah, I get female fans,’ claimed Wendel, although he stopped short of calling them groupies. ‘I don’t have a changing room full of them or anything.’

We also asked Wendel whether he felt the PC was under threat from the increasingly huge console market. ‘I am thinking of moving in a more console direction – but it’s a different kind of gamer. The PC offers better technologies. It’s really the next level over a console. All the new technologies come out on the PC first, and there are some great things due in the near future which will mean people will be buying PCs again and tricking them out.’

But Wendel wasn’t referring to GPU-accelerated physics. Instead, he reckons fully immersive 3D will have a major impact in the near future. ‘Real 3D is going revolutionise gaming over the next couple of years, make it a totally new experience – particularly for FPS gamers,’ he explained.

So as Wendel makes his way back to the US – but not home – we wondered if the gaming rig he has built will be obsolete by the next time he gets to see it. ‘It’s really kick-ass, so I don’t think so!’



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Fatal1ty

Fatal1ty

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Comments

i rember back in the days in hl and q3. I could hear everything but in these new games you can only hear them when there like 5 meters away. am i going death or are they doing this so you buy overpriced sound cards. I hate this pish we need to put up with being a gamer.

Comment by megapig at 11:10am 24th May 2008

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sound hu ha

I've never really understood all the hu ha about mobo sound or sound cards....I simply output mine via the digital s/pdif to an external decoder...surely thats the purest and simplest way of doing it and provided you get a mobo with a digital output you dont have to mess with it when you upgrade....Am I being too simplistic

Comment by technogiant at 4:56am 22nd May 2008

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yeah right!

I can't believe you can get a groupie of female admirers from your gaming skills. That's not going to happen.

Comment by guest at 5:23pm 21st May 2008

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pveater

When you've sampled creative fatality or gamer series for sound, you'll never turn back to onboard... and if you did, you will likely get as he suggested a typical 10% less frags ! I did trying call of duty 4 on the pc at both my flat and my parents..........!

Comment by Lightning_Pete at 10:09am 21st May 2008

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So good....i put my name on it!!!

tbh, i cant help but liken the whole fatal1ty thing to the george foreman grills. People buy those things because dieting nazi's think they are getting to have a massive fatty steak with no calories, just because george foreman says its so good! Fatal1ty is the same, people think they are getting an awesome deal on a dyer 8500GT because Fatal1ty says its the nuts! However in all fairness to him his situation is no different to any advertising front for a large company. Aside from grills and other cooking paraphernalia, pepsi hype up their drinks using well known footballers like ronaldinho, beckham etc, but im fairly certain at half time they dont crack open the pepsi max for that great sweet taste with no sugar! So i say whatev's to the situation, if he has his name on some BS products or really good products, it shouldnt matter because people should be clever enough to do some research. Find out whether or not its worth buying in the first place! PS, a quick message regarding TWeaKoR's post, you mention Fatal1ty being a "rival gamer", you must be pretty awesome to be able to rival him. Because id have said that the likelihood is that you rival him in the same way that yeovil town rivals manchester united.....different leagues mate!! :D

Comment by poorstudent1 at 1:13pm 20th May 2008

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He's a nice guy

I've met Mr Wendel on a couple of occasions, and I have to say his success isn't just because he's an awesome gamer (and he really is, beating mere mortals with just one hand on the mouse, no keyboard). He's also articulate and comes across in person as pretty genuine, without airs and graces. Sure, some of the products with his name on are questionable. But fair play to him for making gaming look like something "normal" people can actually be good at too.

Comment by jdmorris1 at 11:14am 20th May 2008

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I bought an X-Fi Fatal1ty when it first came out

and I hated that it had his logo slapped on it. What kind of gamer wants a rival gamer's logo on their machine? The only reason I chose it was because it had the onboard memory (only the top model had that at the time) and the 5 1/2" bay with 1/4" jacks so I can plug my guitar and MIDI for my keyboard as well. The card had the right features, but the branding almost put me off. Next time I need a sound card though I'll be looking elsewhere than Creative. When I got the card the first time I sent it back - loads of the capacitors were bent. The next one was in a similar shape - what they'd done is packaged the drive bay unit on one side wedged in nicely, then a small cardboard box with the PCI card in it which would fling around loose in the outer box. Creative aren't just bad for after-sales support! On what his rig contains, I'd bet the reason he doesn't talk about it is because he *doesn't* have much stuff with his name branded on it. The marketing guys know that people buying the top end hardware won't want Fatal1ty stuff, but people in the more mid-range area might. Wendel would have the top end, and there isn't much available with his name on it. Still, I'd bet he'd etch a few of his logos in the case somewhere.

Comment by TWeaKoR at 10:54am 20th May 2008

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I don't like him. Here's why:

He tries to look, "mean," in his packaging photos. But he has no facial scars, so is therefore untrustworthy. People without facial scars are untrustworthy. So there.

Comment by carlg75 at 8:31am 20th May 2008

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I wouldn't think

He would even use any of the hardware with that name attached, Would you think he ever used that mainstream motherboard or 7600? Personally I think he prob just skipped straight from 6800 -> 7900 -> 8800 assuming he has gone with nvidia at all. I am not bashing him personally just saying that the products with fata1ty has absolutly nothing to do with him other than the company paying him to stand next to them for a few photos. (PS casing wasn't bad? it is made out of high quality materials, but the design were terrible, the fans were insanely small and high noised due to the poor air blow. not to mention the case looks like a game ad puked over it with logos everywhere.)

Comment by Wolfy at 6:57am 20th May 2008

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don't overreact.

don't be so quick to trash him just because his screen name is iconic with advertising BS. the Fatal1ty name has appeared on a few decent products, a motherboard from abit that i believe was on the cpc elite list for a while, a 7600gt that had some ferocious clock speeds, and the case was not that bad. i personally think that this article improved my view of him, at least now we know that he has some sense of what he is playing on, and not just some kid wondring why the computer he bought four years ago is going so slow when he tries to play his copy of crysis at max settings.

Comment by yougotkicked at 5:32am 20th May 2008

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Shameless

shameless, i never bought anything with that name attached, PC case for 250quid that doesn't even cool well? no thanks. A sound card that gives the same features as something cost half less? no thanks. How about a graphics card costing the same as flagship card but is only mainstream? no thanks. A "pro" mouse which doesn't even track well on steel mats? you can go to hell. So far there hasn't been any fata1ty hardware worth its money. Don't fall for the market gimmik!

Comment by Wolfy at 11:16pm 19th May 2008

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"I've just put my name to........"

"I've just put my name to a new PCI-e sound card which would get me 10% extra frags so none of you think about using onboard sound. I've got 5 kids to feed because of all these damn sexy groupies!" What a shameful plug on his branded merchandise. Visit http://www.crazy-gear.com by the way in a completely unrelated branded plug.

Comment by crazyceo at 9:08pm 19th May 2008

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I hate the crap branded products though. 8500GT. Errr, no! And I really dont believe the 10% more frags thing regarding not using onboard sound! Marketing anyone?? ;)

Comment by pveater at 8:03pm 19th May 2008

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tbh he would probably win on consoles as well.

i think its a mental thing as well as a skill thing,

Comment by TBallS at 7:22pm 19th May 2008

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Sounds like fun

Although I just couldn't play a game long enough to get that good at it, I'd get bored of it. Also I can't imagine him moving to consoles, thumbsticks? Nahhhh

Comment by mrjimmyos at 6:44pm 19th May 2008

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what a lucky B*stard!!

Daddy... when i grow up can i be like fatality... NO!!!, Your gonna be a taxi driver like me... :(

Comment by NikoBellic at 6:07pm 19th May 2008

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