GETTING THERE
It took over half a year after the release of Windows Vista, but we finally have a review of a PC for gamers, that gives blistering performance relative to a Windows XP installation
This good news comes in this PC Magazine review of the Falcon Northwest Mach V, which receives the magazine's coveted Editor's Choice award for high-end gaming PCs.
Here's the really geeky low-down for all you hard-core gamer types:
"The latest Mach V breaks the 16,000 barrier at 3DMark06 (16,660, at 1,280-by-1,024 resolution), and absolutely smokes the (Dell) 710 H2C and the previous Mach V (GeForce 8800 GTX SLI-powered) at both our test games, Prey and Company of Heroes.
Even at 2,560-by-1,600 (native resolution for a 30-inch widescreen panel) both Prey (107 fps) and Company of Heroes (84 fps) have fluid and stutter-free animation. The Dell and the GeForce-powered Mach V both had Company of Heroes scores under 40fps (smooth, but with occasional stutters).
Again, Falcon Northwest (and AMD/ATI) has released a system that blows the doors off the benchmarks, so I'll have to go shopping for new benchmark tests sooner rather than later."
Testing this on a recent, state-of-the art game like "Company of Heroes", which is a WWII game, is a good benchmark.
Just to translate, I have a high-end gaming PC that WAS the ultimate gaming rig about a year and a half ago (a Velocity Micro gamer PC that also had a PC Magazine Editor's Choice), and it chokes on "Company of Heroes" at anything above the lowest settings.
So by all indications, this is a scorcher of a machine for the latest PC games.
So what's the bad news? It's in the opening paragraph:
"This time it's the first single graphics cards with 1GB of graphics memory, the ATI Radeon HD 2900XT.
Pairing ATI Radeon HD 2900XT graphics cards with the new Mach V's ($7,930, direct) takes Vista gaming performance to new, enviable heights."
So, this system requires the latest ATI graphics card that has 1GB of graphics memory (vs. the 128MB to 256MB common in most high-end gaming systems today) to deliver this performance. That kind of card uses a whole lot of power, and generates a lot of heat, which requires elaborate cooling systems for the whole PC.
So it's not surprising that the whole rig will run you a touch under $8000 for today's state-of-the-art.
By the way, it you really wanted to go all out for the ultimate gaming PC, with all the bells and whistles from Falcon Northwest, you'd get what they call their "Bragging Rights" PC, which'll start at $18,000. No typos there.
But coming down to earth, the main takeaway is that we're at finally at the beginning of a series of Windows PCs equipped with Vista that'll finally provide a reason to upgrade from Windows Vista.
And the prices of course, will come down to more mainstream levels over the coming months.
Another six months or so, and we'll be almost there. Vista...worth the wait...finally.
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