Mesh Fireblade SLI

Look inside Mesh's latest PC and you'll find two Leadtek Geforce 6600GT graphics cards. The Fireblade is the first system we've seen to employ Nvidia's Nforce4 chipset and SLI (scalable link interface) technology, allowing a matched pair of graphics adapters to be linked for increased performance.

The rest of this Athlon64 3800+ PC is quite conventional. Mesh has chosen an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard, and there's a decent array of ports on the backplate (four USB2, two Firewire, optical and coaxial S/PDIF), and two more USB on the front of the case. However, gamers won't like the lack of a dedicated soundcard.

The inside of the case is neat, thanks in part to a Maxtor Sata hard disk with its slender cable and 300GB capacity. There's room for upgrades and we doubt anyone will feel restricted by the seven unused Sata connectors, arranged in two blocks of four on two separate controllers.

In tests the twin cards proved comparable to a high-end Geforce 6800GT card and the system handled games such as Doom 3 superbly, knocking out over 80fps (frames per second) at high quality settings.

We can't help thinking that Mesh missed a trick as it could have fitted a single 6800GT, which would leave an upgrade path for gamers to install a second card at a later date.

The Logitech desktop set and Creative 7.1 speakers work well, but pride of place goes to the 19in Viewsonic TFT display.

Contact:
Mesh 0870 046 4747
www.meshcomputers.com

Specifications:

• Windows XP Home
• AMD Athlon 64 3800+
• 1GB PC3200 DDR
• 300GB hard disk
• 16x dual-layer DVD writer, 16x DVD-Rom
• Dual 128MB FX-6600GT graphics cards
• 19in Viewsonic VX912 TFT display
• 3 years on-site warranty