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Final thoughts
MESH Matrix² CrossFire 1900XTLet's consider the MESH Matrix² CrossFire 1900XT base unit first. It's been designed to perform at the highest levels with the inclusion of an Athlon 64 FX-60, 2GByte of DDR400 SDRAM, and a Connect3D Radeon X1900 XT 512MB hooked up to a similar master card. Build quality was good but the use of two double-height cards left little room for expansion. The ASUS RD580 motherboard featured high-definition audio from the ULi southbridge, yet users would find it hard to add in an additional PCI-based card of their choice.
The system was considered to be quite loud when running in full-blown 3D mode, most of the noise emanating from the twin ATI cards. Prehaps a front-mounted fan would have helped matters a touch here? The software bundle was decent, and a 3-year warranty, with the first two years on-site, was reasonable.
2D performance was suitably impressive, thanks to the AMD Athlon 64 FX-60's power. However, nitpicking on a ~£2,000 base unit, we reckon that lower latency RAM would have pushed up performance a few percent in memory-intensive applications. An additional £50 spent here would have paid extra performance dividends. Gaming performance, though, was hard to beat, with CrossFire performance providing silky-smooth framerates at 1920x1200 with 4x AA and 8x AF applied to a trio of modern games run in high-quality mode.
There's little doubt in our minds that MESH has designed a well-rounded SKU at the upper echelons of the pricing spectrum. You'll need to invest in a high-quality display (Dell 2405 or 3007?) and speakers to make the most out of the Matrix² CrossFire 1900XT's gaming abilities, and we reckon that will push the overall cost of the system perilously close to the £3,000 mark. Sounds exorbitantly expensive, doesn't it? Try adding up the cost of the consituent parts and you'll find that the overall cost is actually reasonable.
All in all, a quality system, based on quality parts, that shines in almost every area. A few touches here and there would make it ideal as an off-the-shelf monster gaming rig.
MESH Matrix² CrossFire 1300 and Matrix² CrossFire 1600
The Matrix² CrossFire 1300 and Matrix² CrossFire 1600 base units differ in the GPUs used. Both SKUs feature ASUS' RD580 motherboard, 1GByte of DDR400 RAM, dual optical drives, a single 250GB SATA drive, and AMD's Athlon 64 X2 3800+ dual-core CPU. Priced at £699 inc. VAT for a unit equipped with dual Radeon X1300 Pro 512MB cards and £799 for CrossFired X1600 Pro 512MB cards, 2D performance is identical. The use of a dual-core Athlon 64 is a prudent move that performs extremely well in our multi-threaded tests, beating out a single-core 'FX-57 at times. The SKUs single-height cards offer decent expansion possibilities, and the front-mounted induction fan suggestion for the Matrix² CrossFire 1900XT isn't such an issue with these low-power cards.
3D performance for the Matrix² CrossFire 1300 SKU is reasonable when our benchmarks were set to low detail. Optimal resolution appears to be 1280x1024 with no image enhancement by way of antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. The X1300s' 512MB framebuffer seems to overkill here, with the cards' architecture not able to make efficient use of of the available video memory. The Matrix² CrossFire 1600's multi-GPU performance is also healthy, and the extra £100 affords far greater performance, with decent framerates at 1600x1200. If gaming is high on your list of priorities we'd definitely recommend this SKU over the '1300 Pro. As mentioned in the Matrix² CrossFire 1900XT summary, you'll need to invest in a display and speakers to make a complete system.
What's important with these two lower-priced SKUs is the quality of the underlying system. Should you require extra 3D performance in the future, simply remove the cards and replace with faster models. MESH has shown that CrossFire needn't be horrendously expensive, and our pick of the two is the £799-priced MESH Matrix² CrossFire 1600 base unit.
Overall thoughts are positive. All three SKUs are generally decent systems from an established system integrator. Given the level of componentry, pricing is keen, although we'd like to see the £45 delivery charge significantly lowered considering they're all one-box base units.
- MESH Matrix² CrossFire 1600.
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HEXUS Where2Buy
MESH Matrix² CrossFire™ 1900XT
MESH Matrix² CrossFire™ 1600
MESH Matrix² CrossFire™ 1300
HEXUS.links
MESH Computers - home page
MESH Computers - MESH Matrix² CrossFire - Ultimate Gaming systems page
HEXUS Right2Reply
At HEXUS we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If MESH Computers representatives choose to do so, we'll publish their commentary verbatim.Please note that a manufacturers own comments are not necessarily the views of HEXUS; a manufacturers comments published under the world-leading HEXUS Right2Reply initiative are provided so that HEXUS readers can see both sides of the coin – the opinion of HEXUS and the opinion of the manufacturer – upon which HEXUS readers can make the most informed purchasing decisions.
