It’s one of the facts of the gaming hobbyist’s life: cutting edge games require cutting edge hardware. It’s as set in stone as Moore’s Law (which is itself now 40 years old). Every 12 to 18 months you need to upgrade or get left behind. Our contenders this month make a very good case for starting with a clean slate, and none more so than this month’s winner, the Modtech Civic-64FX. Though it’s no longer based on “bleeding edge” technology – the FX-53 was released in March ’04 and the 6800 Ultra a month later – few combinations available since have been able to top them. In fact, the games industry has recognised that this specific combination is the best for playing Doom 3. And as you’ll see, our benchmarks certainly demonstrate this.

Aesthetically, the Modtech system is brick solid. It is based on Antec’s P160 case, which features brushed aluminium panels, some subtle blue downlighting, and a black panel on top which houses the I/O ports, power buttons and temperature display. This panel swivels around meaning that it can be comfortably seen whether the case is mounted on top of the desk or under it. To complete the look, the two optical drives have been painted silver to match the case. This is a little unusual, though, because the Antec case ships with two drive covers.

Like many enthusiast cases, the P160 features a toolless design. This is great for upgrading, but for an off the shelf system isn’t as necessary. And one of the pitfalls of this philosophy became apparent when we opened the case: during shipping the two SATA drives had slipped out of their rails and had become wedged diagonally. The drive cage also warped slightly as a result. In this system there is no way of locking the drives in place, and the drives are simply held in by a small steel tab. So this is probably not the best case for portable use – by LAN partygoers for example. Which is a shame, because the lockable side panel implies it’s specifically designed for this purpose.
Elsewhere the internals are neat, and the cables well managed. There is limited upgrade potential with this system, though, with both SATA connections in use and all 4 RAM slots taken up. That said, no-one would need to upgrade this system in the next two years anyway.

But it’s not all bad news, obviously. This machine has the specifications games designers dream of: two gigabytes of RAM; a brilliant Creative Audigy 2 soundcard; dual-layer DVD burner; and a speed-demon graphics card and CPU. There are also a total of eight USB ports, three firewire ports, and the external GuruClock.

The GuruClock displays key PC functions as well as time and room temperature – even when the computer is off. It also offers a remote power button but this involves a bit of fumbling around on top of the clock as it is quite small and close to other function buttons. 

In the benchmarks, the Modtech came out on top in the real world tests, while it came a distant second to third in the synthetic tests. It pummelled all before it in the Doom 3 tests, with a lead of a full 10 fps in 1600x1200. In some cases a 10fps lead can mean the difference between unplayable and a good gaming experience.

As far as real world tests, FarCry is a good indicator. It’s every bit as tough as Doom 3 – especially in its use of massive outdoor environments. It’s here that the GeForce 6x architecture shines, with its native support of geometric instancing – whereby a forest can be created in just one pass of a single tree model, instead of requiring a pass for each individual tree. This reduces the GPU load significantly, and the Modtech demonstrates this advantage on the Treehouse level.

The Modtech was bettered by other systems in the synthetic tests, but they are not always a true reflection of how a machine will perform. For instance, a difference of 1000 3D01Marks will be almost unrecognisable to the naked eye. There is a limit to the usefulness of these tests, and so they are intended as a guide only. Even so, a score of 20551 in 3dMark01 is something that was unheard of not too long ago – especially in 1600x1200 resolution!
This month it was a performance tussle between the two systems bearing Athlon FX chips, the Modtech and the PlusCorp, and through the cunning combination of high-end components, the Modtech came out on top.