Standing 22" tall in a Cooler Mast HAF full-tower case, this system looks as impressive as its hardware specs. There are plenty of fans for ventilation and airflow, including a large fan on the top of the case, so gamers shouldn't be too worried about heat during long gaming sessions, and the whole thing works quietly. The Intel Core i7 processor uses hyperthreading technology on each of its four cores. What that means is that the single CPU works like eight, providing more than enough power to run enormous tasks. There aren't that many games that take advantage of this kind of processing power at this time, and nothing we used to test the system made a dent in its total processing capacity. However, we managed to push the Nvidia GeForce 295, which has two GPU's on board, to its limits.

Less acronym heavy hardware like the Sceptre 20.1" monitor compliment the system, sporting a bright screen and 1680x1050 widescreen resolution. We took minor issue with how the monitor doesn't raise up and down (it just tilts) and how it goes to black and re-detects the DVI video connection when a game starts, but forgave it because games and Blu-ray video look great. The small, sleek and black NZXT Avatar mouse works well for gaming and offers excellent response, but its size makes it a little uncomfortable for mundane day-to-day activities like web browsing. That's enough with the extras; let's get on with the game test results.

To put the Paladin F870-SB through its paces, we chose a number of games known for high system requirements and put all settings to the max. Every performance slider was put to its maximum, and if there was a check box available for some kind of bell or whistle, we checked it. All games were run at 1680x1050 resolution using DirectX 10 when available. Frame rates that were not obtained from in-game benchmark tests were shown using Fraps.

We started things simply with the X3: Terran Conflict rolling demo, which has a final sequence that promises to stress out high performance systems. The Paladin hardly strained itself, churning an average of 60 FPS on the hardest graphics test, hitting a max frame rate of 116 FPS and a low of 30. The overall result of all the tests combined came out to about 85.5 FPS.

With the recent release of the Titan Pack update, we ran through a couple sessions of Unreal Tournament 3, and saw a solid and unwavering 62 FPS in all locations, no matter what map or game mode we chose. Similarly, we got roughly 44 FPS from Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box with the high-end SSAO graphics effects turned on, no matter what part of the city we were driving in. Although the Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. graphics benchmark test showed an average of 31 FPS (279 FPS max), we managed to get a pretty steady 45-50 FPS out of playing.

Next, we played through some Far Cry 2. The game's benchmark results with an average of 64 FPS, with an average 84 FPS max and 49 FPS minimum. In actual gameplay, we saw frame rates jump between 50-75 FPS, but mostly stuck around 65-70, which is more than acceptable for gun fights and lighting the grassy fields on fire.