Maingear F131 SLI review

While we don't have an answer as to what was causing this problem, which we and the various vendors involved are still working on, we do have FEAR scores. And the result is that Maingear beat the Velocity, with no drop-off as the resolution climbs. Given the near-universality of DirectX 9 in current generation games, we have to value FEAR prowess more than Quake 4's OpenGL speed as far as overall gaming. OpenGL-based games, while by no means extinct, are becoming less and less common.

If you're wondering why we don't have a DirectX 10 game in our testing suite yet, the answer is that we don't like any of the currently available options. ATI-based systems don't seem to like the Lost Planet test, Nvidia has a weird flicker on Company of Heroes, and questionable claims about anti-aliasing give us doubts about the Call of Juarez benchmark. Rather than report numbers from games that aren't quite ready to be put to work, we're going to hold off until something more robust and universally applicable emerges for testing purposes. Finding such a game is one of our primary missions at E3 this year, so stay tuned for what we uncover.

Aside from gaming, we also have to consider the graphics platform of each of these systems for video purposes. We've found that ATI's (and thus, the Velocity Micro's) HD video capabilities in Windows Vista are superior to Nvidia's, at least today. It's not a video quality issue, but ATI's drivers scale Windows-based HD video properly to a 1080p television. Nvidia-based systems overscan, cutting off the edges of the 1080p content. We'd be more concerned about this issue if Velocity Micro actually offered an HD optical drive option with its system, although you can always add one post-purchase. Maingear does offer a Blu-ray burner (for an additional $750), which we're glad to see. Just know that you if you decide to make that upgrade on the Maingear, you may have to play with the settings on both your TV and your video driver to get a satisfactory video image, at least until Nvidia gets its graphics drivers squared away.

If you look back at our specs chart, you'll see that Maingear sent us this system with Windows Vista Ultimate. We'd like to see more vendors include Ultimate, if for no other reason than the remote desktop capabilities that don't come in Vista Home Premium. Velocity's Raptor DCX didn't come with Ultimate, but you can add it via its configurator for $120, which brings the price of that config to $4,140, still $60 less than this Maingear.

As close as the Maingear and the Velocity compete in the other categories, they also come very close to each other on support. Both offer three years of parts and labor coverage with their systems, perhaps the longest standard warranties remaining in the PC industry. Neither has 24-7 phone support, but they both have reasonable operating hours, Maingear's from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. PT, Monday through Saturday. And while it doesn't have it quite yet, Maingear will be adding remote support capabilities to its tech support arsenal. Velocity Micro offers this today. Where Velocity Micro distances itself is its support Web site. Both vendors offer online support chat, but Velocity Micro has many more written resources available on its Web site. Maingear's is still fairly sparse.

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System configurations:

ABS Ultimate X Striker Elite
Windows Vista Ultimate; 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800; 4,096MB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 768MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX; 150GB Western Digital 10,000rpm Serial ATA/150 hard drive

Dell XPS 710 H2C
Windows XP Professional SP2; 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 (overclocked to 3.2GHz); 4GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM; two 768MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX; two 150GB Western Digital 10,000rpm Serial ATA/150 hard drives (RAID 0); 750GB Seagate 7,200rpm hard drive

Maingear F131 SLI (Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600)
Windows Vista Ultimate; 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (overclocked to 3.2GHz); 2GB 1,066MHz DDR2 SDRAM; two 640MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS; two 500GB 7,200 rpm Western Digital hard drives

Maingear X-Cube
Windows Vista Ultimate; 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800; 2GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 768MB GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics card; 750GB Seagate 7,200rpm hard drive

Velocity Micro Raptor DCX (ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT)
Windows Vista Home Premium; 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (overclocked to 3.0GHz); 2GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM; two 512MB ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics cards; 400GB 7,200rpm Western Digital hard drive; 150GB 10,000rpm Western Digital hard drive