Elite PC Titan FX: Setting New Standards in Gaming

Final Words

Elite PC has been selling computers on the web for quite a while, and we have seen their advertisements in many computer magazines. They also maintain a storefront and LAN Gaming Center at their headquarters in Tempe, Arizona. However, in the end, their main focus has been, and continues to be, as a web-based reseller. This is our first look at an Elite PC system and to say that we are impressed with what we have found would be an understatement.

The Elite PC Titan FX is the best Gaming System AnandTech has ever tested. It is also more than just a gaming system. In every benchmark we have run, the Titan FX is at the top of our performance charts! In some cases, the margin of victory is small, but in others, the Titan FX demolishes what had been our previous high score. There is no doubt that Elite PC's decision to use fast Mushkin ECC Registered memory and a SATA RAID built with Western Digital 10,000RPM Raptor drives have contributed strongly to the blazing performance we see here. Then, add in the Athlon64 FX51 and the 256mb ATI Radeon XT, and you have quite a contender. However, Elite PC, like any system builder, can choose the parts they put into their systems, and their choices for this system are extremely well balanced for absolute top performance. Elite PC appears to have chosen the parts for the Titan FX with great care and tweaked the system for blazing performance.

That is not to say the Titan FX is completely trouble-free. While the performance with 2 DIMMs was blazing, we were not able to get 4 ECC Registered DIMMs to work in this board. We are hopeful that MSI or Elite PC can fix this issue because it is the only real negative we found in this system. Perhaps a BIOS update or careful selection of 4 modules by Elite PC will make the use of 4 DIMMs a non-issue. The other is overclocking, where the Titan FX was a disappointment. At least you can overclock, but we wish we had seen results faster than about 6% overclock. This is strongly offset, however, by the option to add a 2^nd CPU to the Titan FX. In Anand's earlier testing of the Opteron, he found that the 2^nd processor increased overall performance by more than 25%. If the Elite PC Titan FX scales similarly, and we have every reason to expect it will, then the performance increase with 2 Opteron chips will blow well past what any enthusiast might hope to achieve with overclocking a single CPU.

So the point is not missed — the Elite PC Titan FX is the fastest gaming system we have ever tested. The Titan FX is, in fact, the fastest single processor system we have ever tested, however we benchmark it. What's more, this Dual-CPU board can be expanded to two Opteron processors for even higher performance levels. The fastest performer does not come at a bargain-basement price, nor do we believe you would expect that for a system that has the best performance tested. For $3000, you get the system exactly as we tested it, but you will need to add a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers for a complete system. Despite the $3000 price tag, we still believe the Elite PC Titan FX offers excellent value for your money.

This is the fastest system we have tested, period. Sometimes it is easy to send a system back after a review, but this is one system that will be sorely missed when it is returned to Elite PC. If you (or your Santa) are well-heeled or extremely generous, then put the Elite PC Titan FX on your shopping list. You will not be disappointed. The $3000 price tag is a virtual bargain when you look at the performance that you can achieve with this system.