The Mesh MatriX6 Xi PC system runs AMD's latest six-core AMD Phenom II X6 1055T processor
AMD processors tend to perform less well in benchmark tests, gigahertz for gigahertz, than similarly clocked Intel chips. And PC Advisor's standard metric for Windows PC performance, WorldBench 6, doesn't always show the benefit of quad-core processors.
Combine those two factors and you may expect a middling result in our WorldBench test – but as it happens, we saw figures that show this system can happily keep up with the fast Intel Core i5 systems that tend to dominate our £501-750 PC chart.
More precisely, those latter systems feature quad-core Intel Core i5 750 chips running at 2.66GHz, and our WorldBench 6 results from them tend to scatter between 130 and 135 points.
The Mesh MatriX6 Xi finished the test with an overall score of 131 points. So it's in the running with machines costing around £50 less, when performing typical tasks with Microsoft Word and Excel, Firefox, WinZip and Adobe Photoshop.
Gaming results were within expectation for a ATI 5770 graphics card coupled to a fast processor. In our 'High' Crysis test (DX10, 1024x768, high-quality rendering, no AA), the Mesh averaged 65 frames per second, falling to 32fps at 'Very High' (1400x960, very high quality rendering, no AA).
For DirectX 11 performance, we returned to the desolate Ukrainian town of Pripyat, in STALKER: Zov Pripyati. Even running at full-HD 1920x1080, this benchmark using Microsoft's new graphics API showed framerates exceeding 70fps for all rendering, excepting the trickier SunShafts scene, which dropped to a still playable 46fps.
In Cinebench trials, which do show more of what you can do with more than two brains on the case, we saw a single-versus-multi result of 4.93x. That is, by comparing the processor rendering speed of one core to all cores, the benchmark's duties were completed almost five times quicker – a fine result.
NEXT: our expert verdict >>
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