Mesh Matrix Titan Pulse review

As a rule, powerful computers tend to come in oversized cases, and Mesh's Matrix Titan Pulse is no exception.

This isn't just to make a visual impact, though. It has more to do with helping air flow though the system. Powerful components produce a lot of heat, and need to get rid of it quickly. A cramped case doesn't make for efficient heat loss.

Although it's large, the Matrix Titan Pulse looks and feels tidy and well put-together. All components follow the same black and silver colour scheme, so it doesn't look like it was cobbled together in a geek's bedroom. Neither does it garishly shout expense.

BASIC DISPLAY

The VE710b flat-panel monitor that comes with the system is ViewSonic's entry-level 17in display - so it's a surprise to see it bundled with such a high-spec computer. But even though it's inexpensive, and uses an analogue rather than a higher-quality digital connector, the VE710b still produces a decent picture. Less good is the time it takes its pixels to respond to fast-moving images.

Its response time - the time it takes a single dot on the screen to change from white to black and back to white again - is 25ms. This is relatively slow, and results in action games and movies occasionally appearing blurred as the screen struggles to keep up.

Mesh provides a set of Creative P5800 speakers for full 5.1 surround sound. This gives games and movies added kick, although you'll need to find some way of hiding the tangle of wires if you want to keep your room tidy. The Logitech wireless keyboard and optical mouse are responsive and comfortable to use.

HIGH-POWERED PROCESSOR

The real highlight of the Matrix Titan Pulse is its processor. It uses an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ chip running at 2.4GHz. This is the fastest version of the Athlon 64, although its performance is not achieved by clock speed alone. The 3800+ also runs at 2.4GHz, but AMD has managed to eke out greater performance by adding more 'Level 2 cache' - fast memory that's built into the chip, which is used to store frequently-used data.

Cache works a bit like using your Favorites list in Internet Explorer. This stores quick links to all your most commonly visited Web sites. Without it you'd have to type out the Web address every time. The 4000+ has 1MB of cache, rather than the 3800+'s 512K. This enables the chip to keep more of its most commonly used data close at hand.

UNDERPOWERED PERFORMANCE

Where Mesh has made a mistake is in fitting only 512MB of RAM. This seriously undermines the 4000+'s potential performance. Its score of 109 in our 2D benchmarks could be significantly improved by doubling the RAM to 1GB.

The Titan Pulse uses an SLI-enabled motherboard, which allows you to fit two identical graphics cards running in tandem, vastly improving 3D graphics performance. We were a little dismayed, then, to find a single, pared-down version of ATI's X800 graphics card. Worse still, the 128MB X800 can't work with SLI, so you don't even have the option to fit another X800. This isn't a huge problem, but will make any future upgrades more expensive than with an SLI-compatible card. That said, it managed a healthy 37.4fps in our Doom 3 Benchmark, so it's fine for the moment.

The Mesh's 250GB hard disk provides plenty of space to install applications, as well as to store a decent library of your digital photos and music. You won't need to fit a second drive in the foreseeable future. Mesh has also included a dual-layer DVD writer, which can write onto discs with a massive 9GB capacity. This enables you to author your own movies for playback on conventional DVD players, as well as archiving tons of data. There's also a DVD-ROM drive, enabling you to copy directly from disc to disc. Alongside network and modem ports, there are a total of eight USB and two FireWire ports to connect devices like printers, scanners and digital cameras.