Discussion
Focusing on overall performance, Chillblast presents the Fusion Gemini in a decent-looking Antec Twelve Hundred chassis that we took a shine to in our review back in April. It's a decent base for a high-performance PC.
The guts of the system are very good. Intel's quad-core CPUs continue to maintain a performance lead over their AMD rivals, and Chillblast, sensibly, has chosen to overclock a 45nn Q9550 (2.83GHz) to 3.4GHz by increasing the front-side bus to 1,600MHz+.
CPU headroom is such that stability is guaranteed with a budget Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro air-based cooler. CPU-oriented performance, then, should be stellar.
An ASUS X48 board provides the base, and the Rampage Formula uses cheaper DDR2, which is a bonus for system integrators looking to hit a particular budget. It's a feature-laden board from ASUS' Republic of Gamers' line, and also provides PATA support via an add-in JMicron controller.
The CPU is backed up by 4GB of Corsair PC8500 RAM - a sensible choice considering it's significantly cheaper than higher-speed DDR2 (PC2-9136) and any form of DDR3.
Solid-state drives are all the rage right now but the GB/£ champion remain large-capacity mechanical disks. Chillblast opts for a 1TB Samsung model, but we'd probably have gone for two 500GB drives, for reasons pertaining to flexibility and security.
The real jewel in the Gemini crown is the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 card that, when launched a couple of months ago, became the fastest single-board graphics card around. Chillblast has spent a significant portion of the Gemini's budget on it, and gaming performance will be undeniably good as a result.
