Fall Extreme Gamer System Shootout Part 5: Falcon Northwest Mach V

Operating Specifications

Testing Comments For The Mach V

Overall we were pleased with the quality of game play but we were puzzled with some of the scores that we got during the testing. However, like the Alienware ALX system we reviewed earlier, we had amazing scores but at the price of stability issues with the graphics cards. To their credit, Falcon was looking to send us a system to blow the competitors' numbers away. The clock speeds were actually high, but when we said we would also run 3DMark 2003, they had to turn the speeds back down to make sure we would be able to get a score.

The lower benchmarks could be symptomatic of several things. Maybe we are reaching the limits of working benchmarks. Or maybe the problem is posed by system limitations for specific applications, driver issues, or something worse, such as system builder negligence. The latter seems the most unlikely but to determine the exact cause has sent us running down many rabbit trails that need to be examined in more detail at another time.

As was the case with the Alienware system, we could not get everything running at the speed determined by Falcon. However, this was only the case for the synthetic benchmarks at certain resolutions and graphics detail settings. We were still able to run all of the benchmarks at the speeds pre-determined by Falcon. When we encountered a problem, we clocked the system down by 3 MHz, which was the first level at which these benchmarks would run without a system crash, freeze or restart. (The adjusted clock speeds are indicated by a red bar.)