Mesh MatriX6 Ti review

With its MatriX6 Ti, Mesh is the first company to produce a desktop computer with a real six-core processor at a price that won’t make you feint in shock – all thanks to AMD’s brand-new Phenom II X6 1090T. As you can tell from the processor’s name, it’s an extension of the existing Phenom II architecture and uses the existing AM3 processor socket.

Despite the similarities, the Phenom II X6 requires a new motherboard chipset (Mesh has opted for the 890GX), as the 1090T has a trick up its sleeve: Turbo Core. It’s similar to Intel’s Turbo Boost, but not quite as advanced. When more power is required and not all six cores are used, the processor switches to use just three cores and ups the clock speed from 3.2GHz to 3.6GHz. In the case of the MatriX6 Ti, this feature is redundant as Mesh has overclocked the processor permanently to 3.8GHz.

Combined with 4GB of DDR3 1,600MHz memory (there are two spare slots for more if you need it) the PC scored 138 overall in our 2D benchmarks. This is pretty fast, but it isn’t the fastest we’ve ever seen and the individual benchmark scores tell the true story. In our Image editing test (which only utilises a single core), the MatriX6 Ti scored 125, which is only a couple of points quicker than a Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition would score – this is to be expected as the 965 runs only slightly slower at 3.4GHz.

However, in our video editing test, the MatriX6 Ti scored an impressive 156 compared to the 965’s score of 123. This highlights the benefits the extra cores have to play when you have an application that can use them. It’s worth pointing out, though, that Intel’s Core i7-860 (with its four physical cores doubled to eight by Hyper-Threading) runs at 2.66GHz but scored 164 in our video editing test and 151 overall and costs a similar amount to the Phenom X6 1090T.

Although AMD might still be lagging behind Intel in terms of performance, it’s the overall quality of a PC that counts and Mesh has done a good job here. The impressive ThermalTake case gives the immediate impression that this is a powerful computer. As well as the fast processor this perception is borne out by the graphics card: the incredibly-fast ATI Radeon HD 5850.