Aberdeen
Inverness D49G
Pentium II/450, 10 GB disk,
17" monitor, 128MB SDRAM.
From
January 1999, 1999 Computer Gaming World
©1999 Imagine Media All rights
reserved
Full Throttle
Aberdeen Inverness D49G
A new UGM entrant, Aberdeen is a Web-direct system maker whose Inverness D49G system is designed to be the gamer's dream box. Aberdeen has a great looking rig on paper, but in testing, we came across some rough edges, including a nonfunctioning mouse and faulty graphics driver. But despite these glitches, the Inverness' twin Pure3D lls do turn in the fastest 3D GameGauge score for secondary 3D graphics.
In setting up the box we encountered several gotchas, including a cluster of patch cables held together with a tie-lock that connects the 2D/3D board, DVD decoder, and Voodoo2 boards together; it also connects the primary sound card to the DVD decoder. It's not a bad idea to group them together, but they were not labeled nor color-coded. The USB Logitech mouse's driver that ships with the box wasn't installed, so there was no mouse functionality early on. Installing the driver fixed the problem, but it was annoying to initially boot without a mouse. Also curious is Aberdeen's selection of Acer's Future keyboard, an ergonomic split keyboard whose key mapping for cursor movement and insert/delete/pagedown/pageup/home/end keys is one of the most unusable layouts for gaming we've ever seen. Inverness' Super-Micro 750a case is somewhat confusing to get into initially, but after popping off the front panel, the case features twin swing-out doors that make all of the box's innards readily accessible. Inverness' AMI BIPS allows for many low-level tweaks and is easily navigated.
Good notables include a Viewsonic PT775 17-inch monitor with a Trinitron tube that features a four-port USB hub. Also, the Aztec Vortex 2 audio board's mixer has a 10-band graphic EQ that allows for more delicate tonal adjustments of the sound coming out of the Cambridge Microworks speakers. One oddity we found was Aberdeen's having a DVD-ROM drive and Kenwood's new CD-ROM drive using Zen Research's seven-beam laser technology. This combination would allow for DVD functionality coupled with very fast game installs, but neither device can write to CD-R or CD-RW. Aberdeen's was the only box to arrive with two read-only ROM drives. Inverness' performance is a little mixed. While it turned in the best secondary graphics 3D GameGauge score, it delivered the second slowest primary graphics 3D GameGauge score, owing to the fact that it uses Matrox's adequate, but already dated, Millennium G200. In fact, the initial G200 driver that arrived with the system wouldn't complete either the 3D WinBench 99 or 3D WinBench 99 tests. A driver update fixed these problems, but even with this new driver, Aberdeen's 2D/3D card choice also hurt it in the Fill Rate Torture Test in which it finished last of the systems that completed the test. This card's 3Dfx performance is plenty fast, but a 2D card swap would improve its system, as would a better array of game controllers. Aberdeen's offering has most of the right ingredients, but its rough edges and odd 2D/3D choice keep it out of the winner's circle.
Aberdeen Inverness D49G. $5,699. Aberdeen, Inc., Santa Fe Springs, CA. (888) 300-5545. www.aberdeeninc.com
Pros: Secondary 3D graphics performance; easy-access case.
Cons: Slow 2D/3D graphics board; some setup glitches; so-so controller choices; 17-inch monitor.
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