Mesh Matrix Vector CS Max review

Gallery

Verdict:

Mesh's Matrix performs well in 3D games and respectably in Windows. It's got surround-sound speakers and two optical drives, but you must add a FireWire card for editing digital video.

Review Date: 19 Dec 2005

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

The Matrix is a well-rounded computer system, but like two others here it has no FireWire ports.

FEATURES

The Matrix comes in a large black case and has a decent onsite warranty. It is one of two PCs on test with surround-sound speakers and has two optical disc drives, making disc-to-disc copying easy. A cordless Logitech mouse and keyboard are also included.

The 17" ViewSonic LCD monitor produces bright and rich images with smooth colour transitions and accurate colours. It performed particularly well in our greyscale transition test. The monitor can swivel into a vertical position, but the ViewSonic drivers that enable this seem buggy and sometimes crashed our PC. If you want to rotate the screen without the danger of crashing, use ATI's Catalyst Control Centre utility instead. The Matrix performed well in our image-manipulation test, but photographers might be annoyed no memory card reader is included.

PERFORMANCE

The Matrix's 2.2GHz Athlon 64 3500+ processor is one of the slowest in the group, but unlike Evesham's PC it is helped by 1GB of RAM. It scored 109 overall in our application benchmarks, and its score of 122 in the image manipulation test was the best here. The processor struggled to score 100 in our video-encoding test, though, and with no FireWire ports it's not a good choice for video editing.

The 256MB ATI Radeon X800 helped the Matrix run our Doom 3 test at 39.8fps. The Matrix should satisfy most 3D gaming fans, but it's not as powerful as the PC Nextday system.

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