Elite PC Titan FX: Setting New Standards in Gaming
by Wesley Fink on November 30, 2003 10:57 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Elite PC Titan FX: The Test
The full suite of AnandTech benchmarks was run with the Elite PC Titan FX gaming system. Elite PC shipped the system with an ATI Radeon 9800 XT video card, which was used for all benchmarks. The Elite PC Titan FX is configured almost exactly like the Dell Dimension XPS gaming system that we recently tested, so benchmarks are directly comparable between the Dell XPS and Titan FX systems. The Dell uses the 3.2 Pentium 4, while the Elite PC is using the Athlon64 FX51.Please keep in mind that all of our other comparison benchmarks, except the Elite PC and Dell, were run with the ATI Radeon 9800 PRO, which is slightly slower. The 9800 PRO and XT use essentially the same GPU, but the XT is clocked a bit faster than the 9800 PRO. For a better idea on how the two cards compare, please refer to our benchmarks in AnandTech's ATI 9800 XT review.
Memory timings were run with the memory and setup as provided by Elite PC. We confirmed with CPU-Z 1.20a that the Titan FX runs the installed DDR400 memory at 2-3-2-8 timings. This compares to the 2-2-2-6 timings we normally use in our component reviews at DDR400.
The Titan FX was delivered with a full installation of Windows XP Professional, which is our standard OS, and we made no attempt to reinstall. We test systems as delivered, tweaking just the items to make the fairest comparisons to our archived test results. To provide the best test results under these circumstances, all co-resident applications and special services loading at startup were turned off so they would not load at boot. Benchmarks were installed and run from the nearly empty 75GB SATA RAID array. AnandTech benchmarks are normally run with sound disabled to remove the influence of varying overhead depending on the sound chip used on the board or video card. We therefore disabled all sound on the Elite PC Titan FX to provide the most comparable benchmarks. As we did on the recent test of the Dell XPS, we disabled all Creative Audigy drivers in the Control Panel System profile.
As already stated, the Titan FX and Dell XPS are almost identical in their configuration, except for CPU, and can be directly compared. The Dell uses the top 3.2GHz Pentium 4, while the Titan FX uses the top AMD Athlon64 FX51. We included results from the Asus P4C800-E, a top 875P motherboard, and top Athlon64 FX, Athlon 64, and Athlon XP 3200+ motherboards we have tested in our standard test configuration.
| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | AMD Athlon64 FX51 (2.2GHz) Intel Pentium 4 at 3.2GHz (800FSB) AMD Athlon64 3200+ (2.0GHz) AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (2.2GHz, 400MHz FSB) |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB Mushkin ECC Registered PC3200 2 x 512MB Mushkin PC3500 Level II |
| Hard Drive(s): | 2 x 36.7 WD Raptor 10000 RPM drives in RAID 0 2 x 250 Dell 7200 drives in RAID 0 Maxtor 120GB 7200 RPM (8MB Buffer) |
| Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers: | VIA 4in1 Hyperion 4.49 (August 20, 2003) Intel SATA RAID Drivers NVIDIA nForce version 2.45 (7/29/2003) |
| Video Card(s): | ATI Radeon 9800 XT 256MB (AGP 8X) ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB (AGP 8X) |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 3.8 |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP1 Windows XP Home (Dell Dimension XPS) |
| Motherboards: | MSI K8T Master 2-FAR in Elite PC Titan FX Dell Dimension XPS Gaming System Asus P4C800-E (Intel 875P) 3.2Ghz P4 Abit KV8-MAX3 Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 Athlon64 FX51 Chaintech ZNF3-150 (nForce3) Athlon64 3200+ MSI K8T Neo (VIA K8T800) Athlon64 3200+ DFI NFII Ultra (nForce2 U400) Barton 3200+ |
Recent performance tests on Athlon64, nForce2 Ultra 400 and Intel 875/865 boards used 2 x 512MB Mushkin PC3500 Level II Double-bank memory. The Athlon64 FX requires Registered or Registered ECC memory, so tests with the Elite PC Titan FX and Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 were performed with Mushkin High Performance ECC Registered DDR400 memory.
All performance tests were run with the ATI 9800 PRO 128MB video card with AGP Aperture set to 128MB with Fast Write enabled. Resolution in all benchmarks is 1024x768x32.
For the fairest comparisons, benchmarks were recompiled for the Asus P4C800-E using a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 processor.
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Wesley Fink - Monday, December 1, 2003 - link
#7 - While it is clear in the pictures in the review, I did not make specific mention that the MSI K8T Master motherboard requires a 24-pin connector (not a standard 20-pin ATX) and a 8-pin auxilliary power connector. This is the connector often used on other Dual-Processor, Workstation, and Server boards. As a result the choices for PS are more limited. In general, the 24-pin PS are higher quality.madgonad - Monday, December 1, 2003 - link
ElitePC makes good products.I've bought two over the past ten years and both are still running great (although not in my house). They have excellent prices for less robust systems if your wallet isn't blessed enought for the $3k+.
And I did enjoy reading a review exposing the prior Dell paid-advert for what it really was. Nice recovery Anandtech. Gave Dell every chance in the world and they still blew it.
tfranzese - Monday, December 1, 2003 - link
I don't think AMD has confirmed it and probably will never confirm it. It is most probably going to be something you see disappear in time because the FX was seemingly launched in a hurry to drive the nail into their 'performance crown' coffin.I've actaully seen no tests done with the FX's in pair, only read that they can be because the HT links were never disabled.
SUOrangeman - Monday, December 1, 2003 - link
RE: #9 and #10I too was intrigued by the multi-processor A64FX remark. This was a bigger question mark before the Opteron 248 arrived. Still, has AMD confirmed that the FX line will work in MP mode ... and will they support it? It's kinda like the MP vs. XP+mod situation without some confirmation from AMD.
-SUO
Boonesmi - Monday, December 1, 2003 - link
dang that is one very impressive system... for someone who doesnt want to build his/her own system, then this is about as good as it gets :)tfranzese - Monday, December 1, 2003 - link
#14, I think the tweaking is just eliminating bottlenecks such as HDD bandwidth by using striped 10k rpm SATA drives. Just right there you are increasing access time, lowering CPU utilization, and lowering write times.I don't think there is very much else done in terms of tweaking that usual enthusaists such as you or I do to a system we build. Hitting nice CAS times, overclocking, etc are all tweaks that net an enthusiast machine better performance over stock, not tweaked equipment.
ArvinC - Monday, December 1, 2003 - link
This system's scores are really impressive. I would really love to read an article discussing the "black art" of tweeking that some of these system builders use. I bet a lot of insight could be gained if one knew the exact system settings and tweeks builders like FNW, Voodoo, AlienWare, etc. use.Wesley Fink - Monday, December 1, 2003 - link
#1 and #2 - The card is a 256mb Radeon XT, and the info has been corrected.tfranzese - Monday, December 1, 2003 - link
#11, you seem very touchy. Anywho, you're pretty ignorant. Pioneer owns the DVD-R market in leadership, not Plextor - yet anyway. Also, there are few manufacturers who make their own drives and it's only foolish to pay more for the same drive just to have a certain name on it.destaccado - Monday, December 1, 2003 - link
#8 i said nothing about the writers being identical or not all i said is that they were trying to save a few dollars already by using generic equivalents.....if your spending 3g's you should be buying plextor 708's anyways....