Vadim Cepheus Q80

High Resolution Gaming Performance:

We decided to do extremely high resolution since it's the only thing that will really test a pair of GeForce 8800 GTXs. Despite the fact the system has the latest NVIDIA Vista drivers for the 8-series (100.59); we found that performance was very poor across the board, up to only half the speed of the Alienware that runs XP Professional. We discussed the issue with NVIDIA and the company accepts that its drivers still need a lot of work in Vista. However, considering you're investing in the latest hardware and select the latest OS, then drop £5k on a product to play games on, having something delivered to your door that performs like this is disheartening.

Sure, NVIDIA’s Vista drivers will improve over time, but in three months time you may be able to buy the same system for a bit less money. Vadim offers an XP option which should give you similar or better performance to the Alienware because of the extra clock speed, but then you lose the ability to run DirectX 10 games in the future. However it's not generating the kind of frames per second that are unplayable. Even 60 / 80 fps in most games at 2048x1536 is certainly playable, and for the next few months you could easily turn the resolution down a few notches.

This is the kind of PC you buy as an investment in the future, and given that XP is a six year old OS, as a consumer you have to consider if it’s worth waiting for future driver releases or stick to Windows XP for a few more months, eventually forking out another £100+ for Windows Vista Ultimate OEM. Ultimately this is not Vadim's fault because the company is caught in the middle of a new release and immature drivers which is out of its control: it’s a system builder, after all.