Elite PC Titan FX: Setting New Standards in Gaming
by Wesley Fink on November 30, 2003 10:57 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Gaming Performance
In every gaming benchmark, except Gun Metal 2, the Elite PC Titan FX rises to the top of gaming performance. A stock Aquamark 3 score of almost 50,000 is very impressive, but no less so than the 465fps in Quake 3. The Titan FX has been tweaked to demonstrate the gaming prowess of the Athlon64 FX chip and it really shows.
We suspect that the Gun Metal 2 results have more to do with the chipset used than actual performance. We have found the scores of the FX51 chips with this benchmark are very unusual, and we have asked Yeti Labs for help in understanding what is going on with this benchmark on nVidia and VIA chipsets.
Unreal Tournament 2003 Flyby is the highest score that we have ever measured at stock speed. So are UT2003 Botmatch, Aquamark 3, X2, and Quake 3. Mpeg conversion is still led by the P4, but the Titan FX did post the highest AMD score that we have seen so far.
The Elite PC Titan FX lives up to its name in our gaming benchmark suite. It's the fastest machine we have ever tested. Since the Titan FX was also tested with an installed Audigy 2 with disabled sound drivers, we can now be reasonably sure that our benchmark variations in our recent Dell Dimension XPS tests were not the result of remnants of Audigy sound drivers. Something else must be responsible for the variations we saw in the Dell scores, since none of the Titan FX scores appear to be compromised in any way.
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sprockkets - Tuesday, December 2, 2003 - link
Adding, but how much of the system actually follows industry standards. Like why would I want a D/Hell with a stupid bios that is worse than features included even on uATX boards?sprockkets - Tuesday, December 2, 2003 - link
The power supply is FSP, and unlike the stupid dell is not proprietary. FSP are known for making good PS. Like the ones with the 120mm fans inside them.Of course the p4 systems can be faster with the RAID setup but neverless impressive. You should compare not only the specs and scores.
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, December 2, 2003 - link
Doop - While AMD has stated from the beginning that the FX would not be multi-processor capable, MANY reviews have speculated that the shipping FX chips did not, in fact, have the 2nd and 3rd HT links disabled. If links were not disabled, then the chips WOULD work in a dual-processor board. Manufacturers tell us many things, but we still prefer to find out for ourselves, because things often turn out not to be exactly what we have been told by manufacturers.Now that we have tested this for ourselves, the article has been corrected. We have also added the recommendations from Elite PC on multiple CPU selection to the review, and I have just received a written response from AMD. We have done our best to answer the question with hands-on testing in a timely manner, and post the information as soon as it is available.
I also read many other sites, and I don't recall an actual attempt to run 2 FX51 chips being reported. The question has never been AMD's intention with FX, but there have been many questions as to whether the other two HT links were actually being disabled on FX chips. We can now say that on FX chips we have tested, Dual-Processor operation with FX chips did not work, and the Opteron 2 and higher series should be used for dual processors.
Doop - Tuesday, December 2, 2003 - link
tfranzese, not many people think the Athlon FX is dual capable. AMD has clearly stated that they are not. This article was clearly not up Anandtech's usually extremely high level.Now this is purely wild speculation on may part but it could be possible that you get higher yeilds of opteron cores if you accept some with not all the functioning hypertransport links.
Just like Radeons with 4 instead of 8 pipelines.
You could enable the hypertransport links but there is possibility that you've got a chip where the links needed for dual operation will never work.
tfranzese - Tuesday, December 2, 2003 - link
I don't think it's been clear, because I and others were under the assumption that they were not disabled in an effort to get them out asap. Might have just been engineering samples though, because these assumptions came from an article.Shinei - Tuesday, December 2, 2003 - link
Uh, tfraneze, I'm pretty sure it's been clear since the start that the FX-51 has had and always will have two disabled HT links... Turning them on MIGHT be possible, but that depends on how much time and money you're willing to waste (since a mistake can cost you $800).Shinei - Tuesday, December 2, 2003 - link
Uh, tfraneze, I'm pretty sure it's been clear since the start that the FX-51 has had and always will have two disabled HT links... Turning them on MIGHT be possible, but that depends on how much time and money you're willing to waste (since a mistake can cost you $800).tfranzese - Tuesday, December 2, 2003 - link
Locutus, the board is a design that uses only one memory controller to cut down on traces. There's a recent article, I think from GamePC that compares it with an Extended ATX dual board with use of both memory controllers.Wesley Fink - Tuesday, December 2, 2003 - link
#31 - The board is located on the MSI site under 'server workstation' at http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/server/svr/... As stated in the review the board is the VIA K8T800 chipset.Locutus4657 - Tuesday, December 2, 2003 - link
I couldn't find this motherboard on the MSI web site. But to me it looks like this is a dual system using a via chipset? If so I didn't think this was possible... Or at the very least sane. Could some one confirm this?