Performance

Performance for the FX541XT will be threefold: how well it performs as a standard PC, as a media center and as a gaming desktop.

For regular computer use (ie, typing, internet browsing, picture editing, etc.) I had a blast using the FX541XT. It is extremely stable and over the course of my testing only crashed a few times. Considering the Vista Premium OS and that my computing habits require PC’s to be in “on” or “standby” mode, that’s a damn good thing.

In fact, the only concern I had with the machine was with its bloatware. Spoiled on gaming PC’s that come with nothing but the OS or a few additional programs that are actually useful, the FX541XT’s Norton Protection Center, Google Desktop (useless with Vista’s search) and Gateway’s Big Fix software were bothersome. It’s nothing compared to the horror stories from other PC manufacturers, so it’s a moot point.

As a media center, the FX541XT is an excellent choice. With 1.5TB of space on only two hard disks, upgrading is both a possibility and easy, although the Raid-0 setup doesn’t benefit speed much for media. Considering the purchasing audience, it isn’t much of a problem, but anyone who stores large quantities of music, pictures and video will want to be able to swap hard drives easily. Raid-0 doesn’t allow for that without removing both the connected drives.

The X-Fi XtremeGamer is a very necessary choice for making a proper media center. The previously top-of-the-line soundcard means the desktop can sit in your living room and work with that surround sound system in high quality 7.1 audio. Additional IR sensor and remote means you won’t need the Logitech diNovo Mini, even if it’s perfect for such a situation. Finally, the dual Blu-ray HD-DVD drive means all those high definition movies you get from Netflix aren’t a waste, or enjoy standard TV with the TV tuner.

The qualities that a media center requires are simple: easy media playback, high speed, simple user interface and high quality media. The FX541XT fulfills all of these perfectly, utilizing high-end hardware to make a smooth running media center that rarely, if ever, falters. Then at the push of a button turns back to that standard ‘let’s type up that spreadsheet’ computer.

Or maybe it turns into a maniacal gaming beast. Housing two 8800GT’s, some of our favorite videocards on the market that are still considered high end, this combo wreaks havoc across the battlefield. The overclocked CPU at 3.66GHz also does a phenomenal job, especially considering it’s quad core nature.

The RAM is remarkably average for a gaming PC however, as is the motherboard. Using 800MHz RAM (albeit 4GB worth), this is undoubtedly one of the few current-day gaming PC’s not making a jump to DDR3, or at least PC-8500 (1066MHz). It’s not incredibly upsetting per se, but when Vista runs equally well on 2GB of DDR3 RAM as it does on 4GB of DDR2 RAM at 800MHz…

Still, the 680i wouldn’t support it, and few motherboards properly function with both DDR2 and DDR3. As a media center, it makes more sense practically speaking to use the older DDR2 RAM, but it won’t win any bonus points in our testing.

Gaming

As usual, the slew of games to test are as follows: Supreme Commander for its high number of units which requires lots of processing power, Quake Wars for heavy lighting effects, Stalker for heavy shadow effects, and Crysis for pure, raw power.

The first two tests had somewhat surprising results. Supreme Commander actually ran worse on the FX541XT than it did in our Alienware m15x review. After double- and triple-checking the data, nothing went wrong with the testing. However, during standard gameplay, SupCom ran very smoothly and without incident unlike the m15x.

Quake Wars ran notably alright, only a scant 20 frames per second better than the m15x. After removing the framerate throttle, it surpassed my custom machine easily but I expected more out of the SLI 8800GT’s.

Stalker is where the FX541XT really shined. In several different tests and playthroughs, it managed an average of 75fps. Remember, this is with everything at the highest setting with no AA. It did dip down to the mid-60’s at times.

Finally, Crysis was a blast with some of the best benchmarks we’ve ever tested. It sets a high standard with 30fps on high spec, and 15fps on very high.

The significant increase over our custom machine in the 3D Mark 06 benchmark was expected, as its performance in standard applications has been much more fluid than the clunkyness of our already dated PC. We'll have to work on that.

While the FX541XT scored very well in our harder tests, it wasn’t remarkable. The scores were very close to the m15x, a laptop which is severely underpowered in comparison, which either says a lot about the Alienware or little about Gateway’s gaming capability. Regardless, the high performance in Stalker and Crysis prove that this media center can play games with the big boys, and that’s what counts.