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PCs designed specifically for gamers are nothing new. System builders have been supplying specially customised machines to the market for many years.
What makes these machines so special? First and foremost they serve one major purpose: to play high-end games at the highest frame rate possible. There is nothing more frustrating than buying a PC and installing a game only to discover that to display it at its best, you need a higher spec video card or a faster processor. Many companies are now supplying customised gaming machines that are extremely powerful, fast and expensive. For the purposes of this roundup, three PCs were supplied for review, each with their own
distinctive look and configuration. All three are powerful PCs and can cope with most games but as always, some do it better than others.

Dell Dimension XPS Gen3
Price: €3299
Out of the box, first impressions are important and this particular offering from Dell is no ugly duckling. This tower has a large footprint, but for its size it’s remarkably quiet. Indeed of the three PCs reviewed, this was the quietest. The matte deep-blue finish with silver front would not look out of place in any home.
The supplied 17in flat panel display sits on top of a very heavy and robust stand. The display from this monitor was crisp and pleasing to the eye. It is a Pentium 4 3.4GHz-powered PC with 1Gbyte of memory. Video comes courtesy of an ATI Radeon X800SE, in the new PCI Express slot and sound from a Creative Audigy 2 card. A 160Gbyte SATA hard disk provides plenty of storage. A Samsung DVD/CD RW occupies one bay at the front of the PC.

Windows XP Home SP1 comes pre-installed on the PC along with McAfee Security Centre, MS Works, Dell Media Experience and Dell Picture studio. A 60-day trial copy of Paint Shop Pro was also included in the bundle. To ensure that the benchmark test was the same across the three PCs, DirectX was updated from 9ob to 9oc. Upon setting up the machine, I was prompted to fill in the necessary details for McAfee Security Centre.

The installation of Doom3 and Flight Simulator 2004 was faultless. Both games ran reasonably well at lower resolutions but bumping up the resolutions caused a slight jerking of the image. The gameplay was not that fluid. Also anti-aliasing to smooth out the jaggies appeared to be controlled by the video card display properties rather than by the game itself. In the 3D properties of the Radeon X800SE, the default setting is to allow the game to control anti aliasing. However it seemed to work better if the card was told to do it rather than the game. This was true for all the PCs in this test.
The 3D Benchmark score was the lowest of the three PCs and indeed this is reflected in the overall display of the games themselves. An example of this was in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 where the frame rate was often in the mid-20s whereas on the other two PCs it was in the mid-30s. While all this may appear negative, overall, this is not a bad PC. It is well constructed, has
plenty of expansion capabilities and the overall design is sleek and
professional. Five USB ports at the rear and two neatly tucked under a discreet cover below the power button offers plenty of connections for adding peripherals.

But while the Dell XPS Gen3 looks and sounds well, compared to the other two it fell far short of the mark regarding smooth gameplay at high resolution.

Elara Beast
This is a delightful offering from Elara. The smooth black-coated mirror finish of the system complemented by a Benq 19in TFT LCD display makes it look like a serious piece of work. The clear side panel, revealing the inner cabling and illuminated fans, caught my eye immediately. On power up, this is neither a quiet PC nor is it too loud. The front panel has two blue LEDs that add cute background lighting to the front of the PC.

The computer is known as the Elara Beast and it is aptly named. This machine rocked, powered by a Pentium 4 3.4GHz processor with 1Gbyte of PC2-4200 Mushkin RAM, and an ATI Radeon X800 XT 256Mbyte video card. It was fast to boot up into Windows XP Professional with Service Pack2 and came with DirectX 9oc pre-installed. Its 200Gbyte of storage is spread across two SATA
hard drives. A DVD ROM drive and a DVD RAM drive occupy two slots at the front and both are extremely fast when used. Two USB ports plus microphone and line-in slots are to be found under a clever cover flush with the top of the machine. The rear of the PC has plenty of room for expansion.

There are ports for USB, Firewire, Wireless, serial, parallel and serial ATA expansion slots. For cooling, count five fans: one each at the rear and front; one on the CPU; another on the graphics card; and the final one under the see-through side casing. The Ausus motherboard at the heart of this PC is without question feature-packed and Elara has gone down the route of using the onboard C-Media sound system. There is nothing wrong with this as sound
quality is excellent but a separate sound card would have lessened the load on the motherboard.

Very little software was bundled with this review model apart from DVD/CD burning software. Loading a game was fast and playback was smooth and fluid. On the Benq monitor, which was a shade too bright for my eyes, a small adjustment was required. Doom3, Far Cry and FS2004 belted along with no glitches whatsoever. In the 3D Benchmark test this PC was only slightly behind the Alienware PC. Even setting anti aliasing to the highest via the cards display properties, not only improved the image but did not have as
detrimental an affect as one would expect. If you are playing games on a 5.1 or higher surround system, then the noise of the fans will not bother you. On the other hand, while watching a DVD they may become a little too intrusive. Then again, this is a gaming PC designed for gamers!

Alienware Area 51
Some would say an Alienware system is the crème de la crème of gaming PCs and based on this review, I would have to agree. Alienware is a US company that specialises in one thing — gaming PCs. The first thing that hits you when you take the Area 51 out of the box is the design of the PC. It looks like an alien’s head and indeed the Area 51 reference is to the US government project
at Roswell, New Mexico. It is true to say that this PC is unique in shape. What lies beneath that moulded exterior is important and for gamers mutton dressed as lamb is easily spotted.

Upon opening the casing the first noticeable feature is the cabling — it is so neat and tidy. I would go so far as to say it’s the best cabling I have ever seen. Based on an Intel D925XCV system board this Pentium 4 3.6GHz, with 1Gbyte of Crucial PC2-4300 RAM and an ATI X800 XT 256Mbyte video card is a screamer. It scored the highest in the 3D Benchmark test and was fluid in all games played. Windows XP Professional SP2 plus DirectX9oc comes preinstalled. A 120Gbyte SATA Seagate Barracuda drive is ample enough for storage and with plenty of space inside this large tower case; more can be added if required. Nine fans, eight strategically placed around the tower and one on the video card, keep this system cool. This makes for quite a bit of noise but as you blast your way in a game the background noise does not interfere at all.

The PC glows red in the dark, literally as red light emits from the alien’s head on the front DVD drive cover and from around the lower edges on either side. A Sound Blaster Audigy 2 supplies the necessary poke for audio immersion in any game and is an excellent accompaniment to the high quality video card.

One DVD ROM drive occupies the upper slot at the front of the PC and just beneath it is a CD RW drive. Nero Burning and Cyberlink’s PowerDVD are the supplied applications with these drives. Four USB slots at the front and five at the rear should be enough for most peripherals. The motherboard also sports a now standard gigabit LAN interface.

In use, games were fast, frame rates excellent and no problems were encountered during several gaming sessions. While good things come in small boxes, this one arrived in one very large black one. An excellent PC from Alienware and while everyone might not like the look, what is inside performed very well indeed.

Contacts
Dell 1850 402 102
www.dell.ie/special

Elara
www.elara.ie

Alienware 090 6456 500
www.alienware.co.uk

How we tested
We used 3DMark05 pro patched to version 110. The ‘select all tests’ tab was ticked and no other choices were made inside the application. Each PC was restarted after each pass. The resulting scores were then noted and the highest of the three tests was awarded as the final score. 3DMark05 was used as it benchmarks not only 3D performance but also uses Microsoft’s DirectX 9oc,
the most up-to-date version.

Each PC was set at a screen resolution of 1280X1024X32, each video card at its default setting and as in the case of the Dell, PC antivirus disabled. The test was run before any games (Far Cry, Doom 3 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004) were installed, just out of the box as delivered by the manufacturers.

The test was run in the same way as most users buying this benchmarking test would probably run it; default setting with the all test tab selected. Frame counters within games like FS2004 give a good indication on how well the system is doing but the best benchmark of all is your eyes. If everything looks smooth, with no stuttering or tearing of the image and all at 1280 by 1024 then what more can you ask for?

06/12/04

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