Whenever AMD or Intel release a new processor and chipset platform, you can bet there’s going to be a good amount of excitement surrounding the release, along with anticipation as we eagerly await the arrival of systems that incorporate the new technologies. Velocity Micro’s new Edge Z55 Intel Core i7 Gaming System is out and we’ve had the chance to run it through our tests to see just how it stacks up. As you’ll see, the new Intel Core i7 CPU and X58 chipset enables the Velocity Micro Edge Z55 Gaming System to hold its own against the elite PCs of just a few months ago.

The new Core i7 brings with it new chipsets, motherboards, and a new LGA1366 processor socket. What sets the Core i7 processor apart from the other processors is its QuickPath Interconnect, which replaces Intel’s front side bus. This new 40-lane (20 each way), bi-directional serial link provides communication to Intel’s I/O hub and then fans out to PCI Express. The Core i7 also incorporates an integrated, triple-channel memory controller that offers over three times the memory bandwidth of the previous dual-channel controller at DDR3-1066. Intel also brought back Hyper-Threading Technology with the Core i7, which provides two logical threads per processor core, for a total of eight available processing threads in a quad core CPU.

Like many enthusiast system manufacturers, Velocity Micro makes hand-built, high-end gaming rigs using the latest components, such as Intel’s Core i7 processors. Velocity Micro claims that they pride themselves on their extensive customization options, meticulous assembly procedures, a technically trained staff, and in-house US-based support. Each system is hand-assembled by expert engineers and run through extensive testing to ensure complete functionality. As you’ll see, Velocity Micro’s engineers are also appear to be very careful about how they route and tie cables to ensure optimal airflow within the chassis.

Velocity Micro offers two series of gaming rigs—the Raptor and Edge series. The Raptor is “the best of the best” with more customization and tweaking options along with higher-end specs. The Raptor line offers two models: the Raptor Signature Edition (starting at $5,499) and the Raptor Z90 (starting at $3,599). The Edge series is also geared towards serious gaming enthusiasts, but strikes a balance between high-end specs and affordability. You’ll find five models in the Edge series: the Edge Z5 (starting at $859), Edge M10 (starting at $1,099), Edge Z15 (starting at $1,499), the Edge M40 (starting at $1,699), and the Edge Z55 (starting at $2,199).

Velocity Micro added a few options to our Edge Z55 test system, bringing the cost up to $2,399. Read on to see how the Edge Z55 Intel Core i7 Gaming System faired as we put the system through the usual level of rigorous HotHardware testing and hands-on evaluation.

Velocity Micro Edge Z55 Intel Core i7 Gaming System  System Specifications - As Reviewed

The Edge Z55 Intel Core i7 Gaming System doesn’t have any legacy ports, instead opting for ten USB 2.0 ports, two of which are found on the front side of the case, and the other eight on the rear. There are also two IEEE 1394 FireWire Ports, one on the back and one on the front side. You’ll also find two eSATA ports and a RJ45 Ethernet (10/100/1000) port on the back of the machine. You can add an 802.11g PCI-based Wi-Fi adapter for $24 if you like. Rounding out the ports on the back, you’ll find line in, line out, mic, and optical digital line out (Toslink) audio jacks. Next to the front USB and FireWire ports, you’ll also find standard 1/8-inch mic and headphone jacks.

The GX2-W case doesn’t offer any doors to hide the system’s drive bays or power button from little hands, but other case options for this system do offer this additional protection.

Through the case’s side window, you can see that the interior of the Z55 is roomy and neat. This not only looks clean, but it also helps promote airflow. As one might expect, the heatsink/fan assembly and dual Radeon cards take up the majority of the space near the motherboard. Velocity Micro took great care to route the cables as efficiently as possible to maximize component access.

The case’s side panel easily slides off by removing of two thumb screws. The graphics cards' cables are routed near the edge of the motherboard, which may make it slightly difficult to access the only open 5.25-inch drive bay. Other than that, the cables are largely out of the way.

There are four additional bays for extra hard drive storage, though adding additional hard drives would affect airflow and cut down on the internal light from the system’s two front fans.

In addition to the system’s three case fans, there are fans on the CPU heatsink, motherboard chipset's heatsink, and on each of the two graphics cards. Even with all of the fans running, the system is reasonably quiet; the air noise is definitely noticeable, but it’s not intolerable.

The two ATI Radeon HD 4850 cards completely block the motherboard’s two PCI Express x1 slots. The single PCI slot is open, but if you were to put a card in it, you would significantly reduce the airflow to the top graphics card.

There are six SATA connections on the motherboard. Two are used for the Lite-On drives, and one for 750GB Hitachi 7200rpm hard drive. The three available SATA connections are easily accessible.

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On its Web site and in its press materials, Velocity Micro makes a strong point that each of its systems is built by hand and receives individual attention. Our early-model system didn’t come with Velocity Micro’s traditional owner’s portfolio that contains the system’s manual, driver disks, and accessory pack, likely because we received the system before it was available for purchase. Velocity Micro lists the owner’s portfolio as a standard inclusion when configuring the system on the company’s Web site. We did receive some of the contents of an owner’s portfolio, however, such as the driver and application disc, DX58SO Quick Reference guide, four zip strips, five Velcro ties, five extra screws, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon disc, various propaganda, a FarCry2 postcard, an Intel door hanger, AC power cable, and SATA cable. The applications included on the driver and application disc were Acronis True Image 11 Home, CyberLink Live Premium, Diskeeper Home Edition, DivX Pro for Windows, Dolby Control Center, Norton 360, and PLAYXPERT in-Game Platform. FutureMark 3DMark Vantage - Velocity Micro Basic Edition came preinstalled on the system. There wasn’t much of any bloatware preinstalled on the system, which is a nice bonus.

The Edge Z55 Core i7 Gaming System also comes with a Velocity Micro-branded version of the Creative Multimedia Keyboard Lite and a Velocity Micro-branded version of the Creative Mouse Lite Pro. The USB keyboard has a shiny, black finish with silver hotkeys. The keyboard’s shiny finish picked up a few fingerprints, but they were easily wiped away. The predefined hotkeys include: Back, Forward, Stop, Refresh, Home, Favorites, Calculator, Media Player, Play/Pause, Stop, Previous Track, Next Track, Volume Down, Mute, and Volume Up. The keyboard also has two blue lights that illuminate the area in front of the keyboard. The keys themselves are not backlit and have a pretty light touch, but are a bit noisy.

The USB optical mouse is also black in color. It has a blue backlit scrolling wheel. It also has a removable cover and a Scroll button. No additional cover plates came with our mouse.  

Cinebench R10 is an OpenGL 3D rendering performance test based on Maxon's Cinema 4D, a 3D rendering and animation tool suite used by 3D animation houses and producers like Sony Animation and others. This benchmark is very demanding of system processor resources and is an excellent gauge of pure computational throughput.

Cinebench R10  3D Rendering

This is a multi-threaded, multi-processor aware benchmark that renders a single 3D scene and tracks the length of the entire process. Each test system’s final scores to render the scene are represented below.

Raw processing speed and the number of processor cores are the driving force of this processor-intensive test. The Core i7 920 did very well, outperforming all of our other reference systems. These results should be indicative of the type of performance you can expect from CPU-intensive applications, especially those with multi-threading support for four or more cores.

Futuremark 3DMark06 CPU  Synthetic DirectX Gaming

The CPU test component of 3DMark06 is a multi-threaded DirectX gaming metric that can be used to compare relative performance between similarly equipped systems. This test processes two different 3D scenes with a software renderer that depends on the host CPU's performance. Calculations that would normally be reserved for a 3D accelerator are sent to the CPU for processing and rendering. The frame-rate generated in each test determines the final score.

Here again, 3DMark06's CPU test is most-heavily influenced by raw processor speed and the number of processor cores. As a result, the Edge Z55's quad-core 2.93GHz Core i7 920 outperforms many of the quad-core based systems, save for the Dell XPS 730, which is overlocked and has an 800MHz+ clock speed advantage.

On the next few pages, we'll focus on a few gaming specific benchmarks, starting with the rest of 3DMark06's modules.  

Futuremark 3DMark06  Synthetic DirectX Gaming

3DMark06 is a hard-core, forward-looking 3D rending benchmark that pushes a system and its GPUs to the limits. The test includes Shader Model 2.0, Shader Model 3.0, and HDR tests. To push the system, scenes are rendered with very high geometric detail and shader complexity, and with extensive use of lighting and soft shadows. The maximum shader length 3DMark06 supports is 512 instructions. The 3DMark06 Overall Score is a weighted average based on the SM 2.0 and HDR / SM3.0, and CPU scores.

Here again, the Core i7 920 is at the top of the charts, with a score of 19,017 3DMarks. The processor and dual graphics cards contribute to this score, as would be expected, since real-world 3D game play is influenced by these two subsystem components. 

As one should expect, both dual Radeon cards outperform the single Radeon card in this test. At the default resolution for the test, it is CPU bound, which helps to explain why the Dell system with a faster processor slightly outperformed our Velocity Micro Z55 Core i7 Gaming System.

Again, the Edge Z55 came in behind the Dell XPS system, but beat the dual-Radeon Quad-Crossfire system. To give another perspective on how the Velocity Micro Edge Z55 Core i7 system stacks up, we’ll look at a few real-world gaming tests next.

Half Life 2: Episode 2  DirectX Gaming Performance

With its updated game engine, gorgeous visuals, and intelligent weapon and level design, Half Life 2 has become just as popular as its predecessor, the original Half-Life. With Episode 2, you’ll get a number of visual enhancements, such as better-looking transparent texture anti-aliasing. We ran this benchmark at 1,920 x 1,200 with 4X anti-aliasing and 16X anisotropic filtering enabled concurrently. We also enabled color correction and HDR rendering. To benchmark the cards in this test, we used a custom recorded timedemo file. 

The Edge Z55 put up 187.04 fps on our Half-Life 2: Episode 2 test at 1,920 x 1,200 with 4X AA and 16 AF. This is just 0.13fps lower than the top-scoring Dell XPS system with dual Radeon HD 3870 X2 cards. Other systems put up respectable scores as well, but the Edge Z55 with its dual Radeon HD 4850 cards definitely won out in this largely CPU-bound test setup.

Crysis v1.2  DirectX 10 Gaming Performance

Crytek's game engine visuals in Crysis are some of the most impressive real-time 3D renderings we've seen to date on a computer screen.  The engine employs some of the latest techniques in 3D rendering like Parallax Occlusion Mapping, Subsurface Scattering, Motion Blur, and Depth-of-Field effects, as well as an impressive use of Shader technology. The single player, FPS Crysis is a smash-hit, and rightfully so. We ran the full game patched to v1.2 with all of the game's visual options set to 'High' to put a significant load on the systems' graphics engines being tested.

The Edge Z55 didn’t score quite as well in our Crysis test as it had on some of the other benchmarks relative to the other test systems. This is a very taxing benchmark GPU-wise, so an average frame rate of 36.47fps is considered playable. At 39.75fps, the Edge Z55 clicks over the minimum-playability mark, so it still fares pretty well, all things considered.