MaximumPC 2004 12

Reviews

T

ornados are measured by the

amount of damage they do on

the Fujita scale. An “F5” moves

houses off foundations while an “F0”

breaks a couple of branches. With this

in mind, Digital Storm’s

Twister would probably

rate an “F2.” It blew into

our Lab, overturned a few

clipboards, but ultimately

failed to knock us off our

stools. Although fast, the

Twister’s main weakness

is its lack of surprising and

innovative parts.

Call us jaded, but we

generally expect to see new

PCs equipped with new

hardware when its avail-

able. For example, the ZT

Group system (reviewed on

page 82) sported

a shiny new

3.46GHz Pentium

4 operating on

the 1066MHz

bus. It certainly

doesn’t help a

vendor’s case

when our Lab has

new hardware

that they don’t.

For instance,

we have AMD’s

newest Socket

939 Athlon 64

FX-55, but Digital

Storm could

only muster the

last-generation

Athlon 64 FX-53

in this rig.

Despite our

disappointment,

we still found the

Twister to be a

solid-performing

rig. This was our

second encounter

with the Lian Li

PC-V1000 case,

and it continues

to grow on us.

Some folks may

find the Apple G5

look distasteful,

but we think its inverted-ATX design,

dual 120mm fans, and well-thought-

out interior make it a mighty nice

homestead for hardware. Plus, in

black, it looks much less like an Apple

knock-off.

The Twister’s foundation is an MSI

K8T800 A8V Deluxe mobo outfitted

with a pair of OCZ DDR400 DIMMs

and an GeForce-based Asus V9999

Ultra Deluxe. Don’t confuse this with

Asus’ V9999 Gamers Edition—a 12-

pipe card. The Ultra Deluxe is a full

16-pipe part that has ripped up the

competition in our Lab tests.

Storage is handled by RAID 0

Western Digital Raptors and a pair of

DVD drives, one of which is a Lite-

On double-layer, dual-format jobbie.

There’s also an Audigy 2 ZS and Antec

550 watt power supply. The wiring job,

while not in the elite class of Voodoo,

is square. Compare the internal shot of

the Digital Storm with the ZT Group

on page 86 and it’s instantly apparent

why system builders should take the

time to get the wiring right.

Unfortunately for the Twister, it

committed an egregious early foul

upon boot. Our first attempt elicited

two error messages; one saying the

kernel database was locked, and

another message indicating that the

kernel mode driver couldn’t be loaded.

We decided to run our benchmarks

despite the error messages and fortu-

nately didn’t hit any snags. Eventually,

we disabled a soundcard applet and

the messages went away, but con-

sumers shouldn’t be forced to do this

with a new machine.

In the end, Digital Storm’s impres-

sive performance—thanks to the

Athlon 64 FX-53 and GeForce 6800

Ultra—pulled its bacon out of the deep

fryer. While the box didn’t break any

records in SYSmark2004 or Premiere Pro

(the P4 architecture dominates both

tests), it did manage to kick out a new

record in Jedi Academy with its 133fps

score. The Twister also turned in an

exceptional score in Halo , where it just

trailed the P4 Prescott rigs we’ve tested.

The system even did well in Photoshop ,

tailing the ZT Group by just five sec-

onds. That’s pretty good when you

consider that the ZT Group PC packs

the new 3.46GHz P4 Extreme Edition.

We’re dinging the Twister for the

two error messages, but overall Digital

Storm’s PC is a solid initial offering.

— GORDON MAH UNG

Digital Storm Twister

Sure it’s fast, but “fast” just barely meets our

expectations

84 MA XIMUMPC DECEMBER 2004

Good performance and nice configuration.

HELEN HUNT

LINDA HUNT

Error messages on a new machine?

$3,350, http://www.digitalstormoneline.com

MA XIMUMPCVERDICT 7

UNDER THE HOOD

DISPLAY

Videocard ASUS V9999UL Ultra Deluxe

(400MHz core / 550MHz RAM)

STORAGE

Hard drives Two 74GB Western Digital

Raptor 740GD running in RAID 0

Optical Lite-On DVD-RW SOHW-1633S,

2.4x DVD+R DL, 16x DVD+R, 8x

DVD-R, 4x DVD+RW/-RW

Lite-On JLMS XJ-HD1665 DVD-

ROM

BUNDLE

Windows XP Professional, Cyberlink PowerDVD,

Ahead Express, Nero 6

THE BRAINS

CPU AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 (2.4GHz)

Mobo Asus A8V Deluxe (VIA K8T800

chipset)

RAM 1GB DDR400 OCZ (two 512MB

sticks)

I/O ports Four High-Speed USB, two six-

pin FireWire A, one serial, one

parallel, optical/RCA SPDIF

LAN Marvell Yukon Gigabit Ethernet

(integrated)

Modem Creative Model Blaster Value

AUDIO

Soundcard Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

Platinum Edition

Case Lian Li PC-V1000, Antec True 550

Watt

Fans/extras Two 120mm case fans,

ThermalTake heatsink, and

Vantec Stealth fan

Mouse Logitech MX Mouse

Keyboard Logitech Elite Keyboard Cordless

FINE DETAILS

BOOT: 41 sec. DOWN: 8 sec.

0 20% 40% 60% 80%

PERCENT FASTER

ZERO

POINT

SCORES

SYSmark2004

Premiere Pro

Photoshop 7.0

MusicMatch 8.1

Jedi Academy

Halo

172

720 sec

289 sec

281 sec

54.4 fps

38.8 fps

100%

192

680 sec

265 sec

254 sec

133.8 fps

79.1 fps +

+

DIGITAL STORM TWISTER SCORES

Our zero-point system includes: a 2.2GHz Athlon 64 FX-51, an Asus SK8N mother-

board, 1GB of Corsair Registered TwinX DDR400 RAM, an ATI Radeon 9800 XT, a

250GB Western Digital WD2500JB hard drive, Plextor PX-708A DVD burner and a PC

Power and Cooling TurboCool 510 Deluxe power supply.

The Twister pushes all the right buttons but failed to

knock us to the floor. Call us jaded, but it takes more

than an Athlon FX-53 to wow us these days.