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Vigor Hornet ALE Platinum Edition

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The Vigor Hornet ALE ($1,299 direct) is one of those rarities that I hope to see more of: a high-powered gaming system that goes for less than $1,500. With dual overclocked GeForce 7600 GT graphics cards (instead of the pricey Radeon X1900s or GeForce 7900s found in high-end systems in the $5k club), the Hornet achieves some high-performance track numbers. With an overclocked processor and an attractive, windowed case, the Hornet ALE is actually closer than those $5k systems to what many hardcore gamers would put together if they built one themselves. It's an attainable gaming machine for moderately demanding gamers.

As a gaming system, the Hornet ALE certainly looks the part. Housed in a sleek, windowed case with backlit LCD data displays, it has a huge outer display that shows the case and CPU temperatures, the time of day, and fan speeds. It looks as if it belongs on the dashboard of a tricked-out street racer. The interior display, which also shows the CPU and case temps, is redundant, but it does make the system look like it means business whether it's open or closed. The curved front door is stylish and out there without being too overdone. For the most part, the interior cabling is neatly tie-wrapped and routed, but there is still a large, braided column of wiring visible in the middle of the case. The really high-end gaming boxes have cut-and-shortened cabling that lessens the spaghetti, but that level of craftsmanship is costly.

The overclocked 2.6-GHz AMD Athlon 64 3500+ may be "only" a single-core processor, but it performed well on our gaming tests. It won't keep up with a higher-clocked dual-core processor on multimedia projects, but since just about all games are currently single-threaded, the Hornet ALE's dual graphics cards make up for its single-core processor in gaming scenarios. Furthermore, the Hornet's components indicate that it should be ready for both Vista Basic and Premium, when Microsoft's new operating system launches early next year.

The Hornet ALE's performance is good, particularly if you consider its $1,299 price tag. Systems at this price usually come with low-powered graphics but carry other features—like Windows XP Media Center Edition with a TV tuner—to justify the premium over so-called "mainstream" systems. The Hornet's dual nVidia GeForce 7600 GT graphics cards are midrange enthusiast cards. Together, they offer the gaming performance you crave, especially on more strenuous tests like Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, which uses High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Shader Model 3.0 rendering technology to make the nighttime and outdoor scenes more realistic. The Hornet ALE ran the game smoothly at all resolutions, turning in a good score of 30 fps at 2,560-by-1,600, thanks to an SLI configuration that helped it perform better at higher resolutions (compared with single graphics card systems). I doubt someone in the market for a $1,299 system will be hooking it up to a $2,500 30-inch display panel, but if you have a 20-inch LCD that can run at 1,600-by-1,200 resolution, SLI will help you out.

With its strong gaming capabilities yet underwhelming multimedia performance (its Windows Media Encoder score of over 10 minutes is fast for a single-core system but slow compared with dual-core media-focused machines), the Hornet is kind of a one-note system. Today's multimedia-oriented systems come with dual-core CPUs, which help run multimedia tasks like encoding and photo manipulation. But in the $1,000-to-$1,200 range, multimedia-oriented systems usually have integrated graphics—not ideal for 3D games. The Hornet takes the same money and makes the trade-offs in the opposite direction: It eschews the dual-core processor in favor of dual-card graphics, which helps it be a thrifty gaming system.

The Vigor Hornet ALE is an attractive, overclocked gaming system that's fine if you don't have the funds for a massively expensive gaming box. It can hold its own on the game grid, and it's truly attractive in a 21st-century kind of way, without resorting to LED fan overkill. Give it a try if you're in the market for a specialized gaming rig but don't want to build one yourself

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The Hornet ALE's attractive case and tweaked hardware will run—and keep up—with the overclocked DIY dogs at your local LAN party.

Cheap for a dual-card system. Good 3D gaming scores. Full on case..

Single-core system in a dual-core world. Price doesn't include monitor or speakers.

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Type: Gaming Processor Family: AMD Athlon 64 RAM: 1024 MB Storage Capacity: 250 GB RAID: No Primary Optical Drive

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-- Edited by chintan9 at 23:56, 2006-10-17

-- Edited by chintan9 at 23:56, 2006-10-17