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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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....