Product Reviews

Playing the latest games often demands the latest hardware. PCs that use nVidia's SLI or ATI's Crossfire technology, where two graphics cards are used in tandem to boost performance, can easily shoulder the most graphically intense games. The Titan X1900 is equipped with one Radeon X1900XTX, ATI's newest graphics card. We were intrigued to see if it could keep up.

As expected, it breezed through our Doom 3 test, even at ultra-high quality settings. It blasted its way through our Call of Duty 2 benchmark with the best frame rate we've seen. The Titan can easily keep up with SLI GeForce 7800 GT-based systems.

Most games currently available won't be able to take advantage of the Titan's dual-core Athlon X2 4600+ processor, but this should change with newer releases. If you use your PC for other tasks that benefit from the extra processor core, such as video editing, the speed boost will be remarkable. Although it's

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not as powerful as AMD's latest FX60 processor, the 4600+ is great value, neatly balancing power against cost.

Mesh hasn't forgotten the sound. Eight-channel surround sound is supported, thanks to the full-bodied and powerful Creative T7900 speakers and X-Fi sound card. The X-Fi also supports EAX processing so games that can take advantage of this, such as Doom 3, will sound even more atmospheric.

The ViewSonic 19" flat-panel monitor is bright and sharp with vibrant colours and smooth greyscale transitions, but the base is stiff and not easily adjustable. Its native resolution of 1,280x1,024 is a disappointment, though, as the X1900XTX card can cope with high-detail setting at 1,600x1,200. A 20" LCD would have been better suited to this system.

The Titan has two empty 31/2" drive bays, although you probably won't need to use them; the 400GB hard disk should be more than sufficient for most users. A spare PCI slot and PCI-E x1 slot provide room for extras such as a TV tuner or FireWire card.

Copying discs is made easier by the two optical drives, though the Sony DW-Q28A DVD writer can write to two-layer discs at only 4X, so it's a little behind the times. There aren't any FireWire ports, either, which is odd for a PC at this price.

The Titan X1900 is a powerful PC equipped with quality components that should keep both gamers and non-gamers satisfied. It isn't cheap, but its mix of power, features and expandability make it good value, although we wish it came with a 20" LCD.