MaximumPC 2006 10

reviews Tes Ted. Reviewed. veRdic Tized

october 2006 MAXIMUMPC 79

stock setup. Then we ran a second cable

between the spare PATA port and the DVD-

ROM drive and re-ran the test. The differ-

ence? Just one minute. Although we do

think the second drive should be on its own

port (one IDE port was free), we can’t fault

Falcon because the performance difference

was insignificant.

So what does 3.73GHz of Core 2 Extreme

power give you? Boatloads of performance,

that’s what. We keep a spreadsheet of per-

formance scores posted in the Lab, with

the record scores in bold. For the Mach V,

we opened the spreadsheet, input that PC’s

scores, then dutifully unbolded the Dream

Machine’s scores—the Mach V set the high

mark in four out of our six benchmarks.

Compared with the Athlon 64, it’s as

ugly as you’d expect. The Mach V ran fully

46 percent faster in Nero Recode 2.0 than

the fastest Athlon 64 FX box. In Premiere

Pro, the Mach V is 53 percent faster, in

SYSmark2004, 58 percent faster, and in our

Photoshop CS2 test, it has a 61 percent

advantage. Again, this is against the fast-

est Athlon 64 FX machines we’ve reviewed.

They were among the fastest PCs on Earth

until the Mach V hit the scene.

The only scores the Mach V didn’t steal

were in gaming, which is more dependent

on the GPUs’ overclock. Dream Machine still

holds the record for Quake 4 —it beat the

Mach V by a whopping 5fps.

The Mach V isn’t perfect, but it sure is

close. We’d like a little more storage and dis-

crete sound, but we’d happily give that up for a

production PC that sends an entire schoolyard

full of Athlon 64 machines crying to mommy.

—Gordon Mah UnG

$8,395 ($6,895 w/o paint job), http://www.falcon-nw.com

falcon northwest mach v

speed

So fast it makes Pentium 4

and Athlon 64 machines look

like they’re running in reverse.

Greed^9

Why the skimpy storage? Why

the PhysX card?

MAXIMUM

PC

KICKASS

Fna, this FnW box is fast, despite the temporary ghetto-fabulous north bridge fan.