Systemax Wildcat

A few graphical stumbles stop the Wildcat from being the ultimate gaming machine for the price

It sat on the desk, innocuous in many regards but then looks can be totally deceiving. Under that blue-and-silver casing lays a monster, power so unimaginable as to make mortal, normal machines quake.

Systemax is the manufacturer of the Wildcat PC gaming system, and when it comes to the sheer power of this computer, it sports of the best components available. A machine was sent to GameZone for review purposes and while the approximately $4,500 price tag is daunting, when one considers what this machine houses and how long it may be a viable machine, the price point is in line with the mega-machines on the market.

What’s under the hood …

Just the facts? Well, Ok, that is certainly doable. The Wildcat has an AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 processor, an Asus A8N32-SLI Gaming Edition motherboard and Ageia PhysX 128-meg GDDR3 physics accelerator card, with Corsair TWINX 2-gig PC3200 XMS pro memory, two BFG GeForce 7900 GTX 512-meg video cards, a 16x DVD-R/RW dual layer drive and 52x32x52/16x combo drive, a 300-gig RAID 0 Stripe plus an additional 400-gig storage drive, Ultra X2-Connect 550-watt power supply, Microsoft Windows XP Professional and the peripherals include a Saitek Eclipse Blue Illuminated Gaming Keyboard and a Razer Copperhead High Precision Blue Gaming Mouse.

(The monitor was not part of the package sent, and thus not included in the system specs given here.)

The case itself has three fans on the left side panel from the face, a lock on the access plate to the drives, and side ports for a microphone and headset. The right side panel has a clear plastic inset to see inside the machine. Does it look impressive in there? Definitely.

But what does all that mean? Essentially, this machine has the power to run just about any program on the market – yes, even EverQuest II at its highest settings, which mostly include high-end graphical settings that deal in lighting, shadows and specular details, as well as texture details.

The Ageia card is new technology, not fully integrated in many games, but the card renders out physical attributes on a greater scale. For example, 100 raindrops on an overcast day could become a 1,000 thanks to the rendering capabilities of this card, which gives more depth to the graphics and more visual immersion.

The top-end video cards work in tandem, one rendering out the upper half of the screen, the second rendering the lower half. Coupled with the AMD CPU and the two gigs of RAM, and you have a screaming machine.

While the AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 processor is only clocked at 2.61 gigs, don’t let that number fool you. There is a reason that AMD is in this machine. The processor moves information faster than most Intel chipsets and is favored among gamers for that reason. With the 2 gigs of RAM, there is little this machine cannot devour.

Quite a number of titles were run through the system, which was tested at the system specs shipped, and not tweaked in any regard. And yes, in online games, lag was experienced, but then that is part of the ISP and server end, and cannot be overrun with system specs.

A full gamut of games was tested, from shooters such as the beta build of El Matador to an array of MMOs, and a couple of real-time strategy titles. Any problems? Well, actually, there seemed to be a certain point in the game where the system would hang up momentarily, then clear and each game was running at the highest limit configured in the game itself. Also, the dual video cards had to be synchronized to work in concert. Once that happened, the machine purred along delivering high-end graphics that were amazing.

Few games incorporated the Ageia PhysX card, but once you find one that does, you can’t help but appreciate what this card adds to the graphical display. City of Villains’ recent Issue 7 added the PhysX capabilities to the game, but while the options menu shows it is available, there didn’t seem to be a way to turn it on. However, with the graphics cards working together over a wide-screen display, the game was even more so of a visual treat.

But generally speaking, the visual quality is not what the machine should be totally about. Yes, it is important, but the performance is what matters. The power supply packed in this machine does an excellent job of feeding the machine’s voracious appetite, but the cables for the supply are just sort of clumped and present a rather untidy appearance through the side panel. The Asus audio console does a solid job in terms of options, allowing the output to be configured for up to eight output channels.

The machine does have a good warranty program (which can be extended to three years for $79).

The stalls aside (and this was perplexing because it seemed to happen in every game after five minutes of play – patience, it will come back in 30 seconds; although if in a game that is PvP based, you’ll likely come back dead), the Wildcat system does have a lot of power and top-of-the-line components. The price tag is hefty and the AMD processor is not actually the best on the market (AMD has an FX-62 available). The casing may be not that amazing looking, but seriously, it is what is inside that counts the most. If one just looks at the components and the fact that these are top of the line, then it seems that this is a machine that may have some longevity. Still, pop in the newer AMD processor (which may alleviate some of the performance issues), and this machine will be more than a mere gaming machine, it will be a monster that will last many years.

Pros:
The Ageia PhysX card will be a boon as more games implement the technology, and the graphics this machine is capable of producing are amazing. The machine only has one open PCI slot (the express slots that usually are where you would plug in a graphics card or such), but this is not a problem simply because this machine is fully loaded. And while not a part of the machine, per se, the inclusion of the Saitek keyboard and Razer mouse are bonuses.

Cons:
Each game tested stall at some point between five and 10 minutes into the game, and the stall lasted for 30 seconds or so. While it didn’t fix the stalling, there was a problem with some games that were a bit more graphically heaving causing a headache after about 40 minutes of play. There was a button found in the systray that allowed the video cards to synch and this alleviated that problem.

Verdict: 7.0
The machine has a lot of power, and top-of-the-line components, but the stalls were a problem and these were perplexing. The same games were played on other machines and while the graphics settings were not as high, there was no stalling. The price point is high, but for that one deserves a machine that is relatively flawless. The Wildcat is quite powerful, to be sure, but it does have a few flaws.