ARIA Gladiator 6300-HD7870LE AMD 4.10ghz 6 core System review

1. Introduction2. ARIA Gladiator 6300-HD7870LE3. ARIA Gladiator 6300-HD7870LE (Super High Res Gallery)4. Overview and Testing Methodology5. Synthetic: PCMark 76. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage7. Synthetic: 3DMark 118. Synthetic: 3DMark9. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark10. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra11. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit12. Synthetic: SSD & HDD Testing13. Real World: 3D Rendering14. Real World: BluRay Playback15. Real World: Flash HD Playback16. Real World: HandBrake 9.517. Real World: Media Encoding18. Gaming: Total War: Shogun 219. Gaming: Far Cry 3 (DX11)20. Gaming: Dirt ShowDown (DX11)21. Gaming: Sleeping Dogs (DX11)22. Gaming: Max Payne 3 (DX11)23. Technical: Thermal Dynamics24. Technical: Acoustics Performance25. Closing Thoughts26. View All Pages

If you have a limited budget then many of the high end systems we review on Kitguru are simply out of reach. Today we aim to redress this by looking at a budget oriented build from UK retailer ARIA. The Gladiator 6300 comprises a 6 core AMD processor, 8GB of 1,600mhz memory, Corsair power supply and an AMD HD7870 Tahiti LE graphics card. The asking price? A cool £499.99 inc vat. Is this THE budget system you need to be looking at this year?

The Gladiator system is designed for the enthusiast user on a very tight budget. If you aren't able to make the time to build a system, or just don't have the interest then ARIA are promoting the Gladiator 6300 as an ideal, low cost gaming system. Today we will test the system with a variety of synthetic and real world benchmarks.

It is worth pointing out that ARIA don't ship the Gladiator 6300-HD7870LE with an Operating system installed, so you need to factor that into the cost and spend some time setting the system up after unboxing.

Specification:

• AMD (Piledriver) FX-6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (4.10GHz Turbo Speed) Six-Core Processor.
• AMD Radeon HD 7870 Tahiti LE GDDR5 2048MB DirectX 11 Graphics.
• 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 (2x4096MB) Dual-Channel Memory (32GB Supported).
• 500GB Hitachi SATA Hard Drive – OS, Applications & Storage.
• GIGABYTE AMD 760G Express Chipset Motherboard w/ 2x USB 3.0 Ports.
• 500W Corsair Builder Series 500CX 80PLUS Bronze Power Supply.
• ARIAnet Triton Black Midi Tower Gaming Case w/ Blue LED Fan.
• AMD CPU Cooler.
• Lite-On DVDRW Dual Layer SATA 24x DVD±R Rewriter (m-Disk Support).
• Onboard 2/4/5.1/7.1 Channel High Definition Audio.


Our review system arrived in a ARIAnet Triton chassis box, with the Gigabyte motherboard box adhered to the outside. We would hope Aria might ship these a little better to the customer as the motherboard box looked a little worse for wear during transit and all the important driver discs and accessories are inside.

The ARIA Gladiator 6300-HD7870LE is not the most eyecatching looking system, but for less than £500 we wouldn't think you would get much better.

The optical drive is mounted at the top of the case and in the middle of the front panel are the USB and headphone/microphone connectors. At the side is a power button. The case is quite light as the materials are obviously thinner due to the budget price point.


The case has a blue exhaust fan installed at the rear and there are watercooling holes above. The Gigabyte motherboard has 6x USB ports (4xUSB2.0 and 2xUSB3.0), alongside DVI, VGA and HDMI connectors. The HD7870 LE is installed in the top slots and the Corsair power supply is installed at the bottom.

No internal packaging to remove before use. The case may be budget oriented, but it is painted black inside and the ARIA build is clean and the cables are well routed. There are some peripheral cables visible in the bottom tray below the 2.5 inch hard drive.

No fancy cooler on the processor, just a reference AMD heatsink. There is a blue exhaust fan at the rear of the case, which expels hot air.

The budget oriented Corsair CX500 power supply is used in this build, not the newer modular version.

The VTX3D HD7870 LE Tahiti card.

Sadly, not a Solid State Drive, but a 5,400rpm 2.5 inch mechanical drive. We know already that this is going to negatively impact overall system responsiveness.


There are not that many hardwired cables with the CX500 power supply, so they are easy enough to route along the length of the chassis.
On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.








The ARIA Gladiator 6300 does not ship with an operating system, so it is up to the end user to install this from fresh, along with any drivers and software. The upside is that you can tweak the install completely to your desires and you won't be forced to deinstall bloat ware and clean the registry afterwards.

The downside is obviously the additional cost of the operating system, which needs to be factored into the total cost of ownership.

Above, an overview of the system in CPUz and GPUz. ARIA are using the AMD FX6300, a fantastic value for money processor with 6 cores running at 3.5ghz. The FX6300 can turbo to 4.1ghz under specific load demand situations. Our review build featured 8GB of ADATA 1,600mhz memory with 9-9-9-24 timings. ARIA have told us that the manufacturer of the memory may vary from build to build, depending on what is in stock at the time.

The VTX3D HD7870 Tahiti LE  is not based on the Pitcairn XT core, but a ‘cut down’ version of the more expensive Tahiti core. This HD7870 ‘Tahiti LE’ version we know is built from 4313M Transistors (like the 7900 series) and has an upgraded 1,536 shader count. The HD7950 has 1,792 shaders and the earlier HD7870 has 1,280 shaders. In this regard the new HD7870 edition slots firmly half way between the standard HD7870 and HD7950.

There are also now 24 SIMD units, up from 20 on HD7870 and less than the HD7950 (which has 28). The ROP count has not changed from 32, although there are now 96 texture units, up from 80 on the HD7870 but still less than the 112 count on the HD7950.

The core is clocked at 975mhz and the 2GB of GDDR5 memory is clocked at 1,500mhz (6Gbps effective) connected via a 256bit memory interface.

We are using the 30inch Dell U3011 for this review today.

Comparison Systems (for specific synthetic test compares):

Intel E5 2687W x 2
Motherboard: Asus Z9 PE-D8 WS
Coolers: Corsair H80 x2
Memory: 64GB Kingston Predator 1,600mhz 9-9-9-24 1T
Graphics Card: Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition (1,200mhz core 1,600mhz memory).
Power Supply: Seasonic 1000W Platinum Modular
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li X2000FN
Monitors: Dell U3011, 3x Ilyama ProLite E2472HDD
Boot Drive: Corsair 240GB Neutron GTX SSD
Secondary Drive: Corsair 240GB Neutron SSD

Intel E5 2660
Motherboard: Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI
Cooler: Corsair H100
Memory: 16GB G.Skill ARES 2,133mhz @ 9-11-10-28
Graphics Card: Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition (1,200mhz core 1,600mhz memory).
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li X2000a
Boot Drive: Intel 510 120GB
Secondary Drive: Patriot 240GB WildFire

Intel i7 3960X EE
Motherboard: Asus P9X79 WS WorkStation
Cooler: Corsair H100
Memory: 8GB Corsair Dominator GT8 2400mhz memory
Graphics Card: Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition (1,200mhz core 1,600mhz memory).
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos 2
Boot Drive: Crucial C300 128GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 240GB Pyro SE

Intel i7 3820
Motherboard: ASRock Extreme4-M
Cooler: Intel reference cooler
Memory: 8GB Corsair GTX8 @ 2133mhz
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: Lian Li PC60
Boot Drive: Crucial C300
Secondary Drive: Patriot Pyro SE 240GB

Intel i5 3570K @ 4.2 – OCUK Prodigy Arctic Gaming System
Motherboard: ASRock Z77E-ITX Intel Z77
Cooler: Coolit Liquid
Memory: Corsair Vengeance White 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
Power Supply: OCZ ZS 750W PSU
Chassis: Bitfenix Prodigy Mini ITX Case – White
Boot Drive: OCZ Vertex 4 128GB
Secondary Drive: 1TB HDD

AMD FX 8150 Black Edition
Processor: AMD FX 8150 Black Edition
Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7
Cooler: Noctua NH D14
Memory: G-SKill Ripjaws 1600mhz 8GB (2x 4GB)
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: SilverStone Raven 3
Boot Drive: Intel 40GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 120GB WildFire

Intel Core i7 990X
Processor: Intel Core i7 990x
Cooler: Corsair H100
Motherboard: Gigabyte G1 Assassin
Memory: Kingston HyperX 6GB
Drives: Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Chassis: Antec Twelve Hundred

Core i7 970 @ 4.6ghz
Graphics: Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition (1,200mhz core 1,600mhz memory).
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Memory: 6GB ADATA @ 2133mhz 9-10-9-32
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)

Intel Core i7 2700k
Processor: Intel Core i7 2700k
Cooling: ThermalTake Frio OCK
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Z68 Motherboard
Chassis: Silverstone Raven 3.
Power Supply: Corsair 850W.
Memory: Corsair 1600mhz memory
Storage: Intel 80GB SSD (boot) / Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD.

Intel Core i7 2600k
Processor: Intel Core i7 2600k
Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen 3
Cooler: Intel XTS-100H
Memory: ADATA 1600mhz DDR3 8GB (2x4GB)
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower 850W
Boot Drive: Intel 510 SSD 250GB

Intel Core i5 2500k
Processor: Intel Core i7 2500k
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Z68 Motherboard
Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme Rev.2 CPU Cooler
Memory: Corsair 1600mhz memory 8GB (2x4GB)
Power Supply: Corsair 850W.
Boot Drive: Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD.

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T 
Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7
Cooler: Noctua NH D14
Memory: G-SKill Ripjaws 1600mhz 8GB (2x 4GB)
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: SilverStone Raven 3
Boot Drive: Intel 40GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 120GB WildFire.

Software:
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
PCMark 7
Cinebench 11.5 64 bit
FRAPS Professional
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 11
Cyberlink MediaEspresso
HQV Benchmark V2.
Atto Disk Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark
HQV Benchmark 2.0
SiSoft Sandra

Games:
Max Payne 3 (DX 11)
Total War: Shogun 2 (DX11)
Dirt Showdown (DX 11)
Sleeping Dogs (DX 11)

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Asus USB BluRay Drive
Lacie 730 Monitor (Image Quality testing)
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter
Nikon D3X with R1C1 Kit (4 flashes), Nikon 24-70MM lens.

Game descriptions are edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.


The system scores 2,456 points, held back clearly by the hard drive performance.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.


The system scored just under 20,000 points, which is a decent score.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

The system scores higher in the graphics test, which would be expected. The overall score is just under 7,000 points, which is a good first indication of potential Direct X 11 performance.

3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.

Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system.

Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.


The powerful HD7870 LE Tahiti helps boost the overall score to 4,816 points. A very healthy score for such a demanding test.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp.

It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

The system averaged around 68 frames per second at these demanding settings.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”.

We think that’s quite fitting.It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

The processor performance is reasonably good, especially considering the very modest price point. Memory performance is actually pretty good for 1,600mhz rated memory at 9-9-9-24 timings.

CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.


The AMD FX6300 wouldn't be an ideal solution for heavy duty, regular 3D rendering, but for lighter, occasional use it is fine.

Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0 x64. We use this program to test the storage options in the system.

The 5,400 rpm 2.5 inch mechanical drive isn't a great performer, peaking between 85 Mb/s and 95 Mb/s in the sequential tests. Obviously this drive was chosen to lower the cost of the Gladiator build, but it is a major bottleneck for overall system performance.

ATTO results mirror the CrystalDiskMark findings. the drive is limited in speed. Maximum sequential performance in this test is around 100 MB/s in both the read and write tests.

How does this affect real world performance? The system takes around 50 seconds to boot up and become responsive and overall performance is very weak. We would try and swap this out for a small, expensive Solid State Drive, and use this mechanical drive for storage duties only.

V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today.

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results.

Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs.

Major new features:

• Slate: A node based material editor.
• Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU.
• Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset
• 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik.
• Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport
• Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry
• Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package
• Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders
• Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor
• FBX file linking
• Save to Previous Release (2010)

We created a new 8200×3200 scene and recorded the time for the hardware to finalise the render.

The AMD FX6300 struggles in this test, taking bottom position with a time of 9 minutes and 35 seconds, significantly behind the Core i5 2500k.

Our good friends at Cyberlink kindly supplied the software for our BluRay and conversion tests.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 12 is one of the finest solutions for the BluRay experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the new Bluray Disc of ‘The Road’.


The system scores well, averaging only 10 percent CPU time during the test.

Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online.

No performance issues, averaging 11 percent CPU time in the Flash HD playback test.

Handbrake is a fantastic free program which we wanted to include to confirm findings with Media Espresso, earlier in the review. HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

We used the latest V 0.9.5 for testing today across all platforms. We encoded an DVD.MPG file.

The system takes just under 7 minutes to complete the encoding task.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 4.4GB 720p MKV file (1h:58mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power.

Hardware acceleration is enabled.


The system took 14 minutes and 36 seconds to complete the encoding task. The fastest Intel systems rate between 7 and 8 minutes, while the last generation Intel ATOM systems will take 1 hour and 15 minutes. Overall, decent performance, but if you want to encode video on a regular basis, we would recommend you budget a little more money.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

We run the DX11 Graphics High 1080p benchmark, available for this game in STEAM. You can therefore directly compare against your own system. Frame rates are rounded up or down to the nearest digit.

Real in game performance varies substantially across the environments and levels, but we include these results so you can compare directly with your own system. If the game delivers good frame rates with the 1080p benchmark, you can sure it will run well with high image quality settings in game too.


Excellent results, as the HD7870 LE Tahiti is handling most of the processing. The system averaged 64 frames per second, delivering perfectly smooth frame rates.

Far Cry 3 is an open world first-person shooter video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal in conjunction with Ubisoft Massive, Ubisoft Red Storm, Ubisoft Reflections, and Ubisoft Shanghai and published by Ubisoft for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It is the sequel to 2008′s Far Cry 2. It has received a lot of acclaim from the public and is up for contention as Game of the Year via many publications.

We configured this game to run with extremely high image quality settings, as shown above.

The performance is borderline smooth, still good results. A few image quality settings could be lowered a little bit to help generate some more additional frames per second.

Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

We configured the game at the ULTRA preset with a 1080p resolution and 8x MSAA.

The system handles this game with relative ease, averaging 63 frames per second and maintaining a >40 frame rate at all times.

Sleeping Dogs started development as an original title, but was announced in 2009 as True Crime: Hong Kong, the third installment and a reboot of the True Crime series. As a result of the game’s high development budget and delays, it was canceled by Activision Blizzard in 2011. Six months later, it was announced that Square Enix had picked up the publishing rights to the game, but the game was renamed Sleeping Dogs in 2012 since Square Enix did not purchase the True Crime name rights.

We are using the highest possible image quality settings at 1080p, including the high resolution texture pack.

A very demanding engine at these high settings. The game was mostly playable, although a few environmental locations put too high a strain on the hardware, with the frame rate dropping below the sweet spot of 25 frames per second.

Max Payne 3 is a third-person shooter in which the player assumes the role of its titular character, Max Payne. Max Payne 3 features a similar over-the-shoulder camera as its predecessors, with the addition of a cover mechanic, while also retaining much of the same run-and-gun style of gameplay. Max Payne 3 also marks the return of bullet-time in action sequences, for which the franchise is notable.

In bullet-time it is possible to see every bullet strike an enemy in detail. New to the series is a “Last Stand” mechanic, which gives the player a grace period after losing all health during which time the player may kill the enemy that wounded them in order to continue playing, however this mechanic is only usable if the player has one or more bottles of painkillers in their possession.

We used the image quality settings, highlighted above. Total video memory demand was 1270MB.

The Gladiator system manages to maintain smooth frame rates at these settings, only dropping once below 30 frames per second. Excellent results for this demanding Direct X 11 engine.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

The system is not overvolted and the AMD FX6300 runs cool most of the time, below 50c. Only under extended stress, does it rise a little further to around 52c. There is decent airflow in this case too, which helps.

Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The system is relatively quiet most of the time, even when gaming. Under extended load, the noise rises to around 37.3 dBa which is clearly audible, although never that intrusive.
The ARIA Gladiator 6300-HD7870LE is a system designed to target a very competitive price point. At only £499.99 inc vat it will certainly appeal to a wide audience of gamers who simply just can't afford to spend any more money.

While you will need to budget in the cost of an operating system, there is a good chance that an enthusiast user will already have an OS license at home, therefore the ARIA savings make sense.

Initial impressions are quite positive, the ARIAnet Triton chassis may be a no frills design but it is reasonably well made and has four USB ports on the front for easy access.

The internal build is excellent, all of the cables are well routed and ARIA have adopted the excellent, low cost Corsair CX500 power supply at the heart of the build. The system was stable throughout testing and we left it running a stress test loop overnight without an issue.

The AMD FX6300 is an excellent choice to keep the Gladiator price down, retailing at only £90 inc vat. The 6 core design is capable and ideal for a low cost gaming system. It does run out of steam a little when dealing with more serious 3D rendering and video editing duties, but when factoring in the very low price, it is hard not to be impressed.

The star of the show is the AMD HD7870 LE Tahiti GPU. ARIA have wisely budgeted around 35% of the overall Gladiator 6300 cost on the graphics card, which means the system can deal with the most demanding Direct X 11 games at 1080p with high eye candy settings. So many ‘gaming systems' fail in this regard, so ARIA do deserve some credit.

To keep the costs down, ARIA have had to use the reference AMD cooler. While it looks ugly, it can cope with the FX6300 at reference clock speeds without emitting too much noise.

The biggest issue with this system is the very slow 2.5 inch 5,400rpm mechanical hard drive. I appreciate the extra cost in adding a Solid State unit, but I really couldn't live with this 5,400 rpm drive myself long term. Windows is slowed down dramatically, and boot time is painful – much as we would expect from a drive commonly adopted in a budget laptop computer. Budgeting a little extra later for a faster OS boot drive would be my first ‘upgrade for this system at a later date.

The ARIA Gladiator 6300-HD7870LE is an excellent low cost gaming system, the HD7870 Tahiti LE card is more than capable of handling anything you can throw at it while delivering smooth frame rates. As I have already mentioned there are certainly some system weaknesses, but ARIA have ensured that enough of the budget has been invested into the ‘gaming' side of the machine. If you want a 3D rendering or video encoding rig, then look at other options which place a higher focus on the processing side.

Pros:

• well balanced for gaming.
• runs relatively cool under load.
• not too loud.
• excellent gaming performance with the latest titles.
• good value for money.

Cons:

• horrible 2.5 inch 5,400 rpm hard drive.
• reference cooling.
• you need an operating system license.

Kitguru says: A good value for money build, and it is well put together.

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