Falcon Northwest Tiki 2022 Review: Tiny Gaming PC That Slays
Falcon Northwest Tiki (2022): Gaming And Graphics Benchmarks
3DMark Time Spy DX12 Benchmarks
Well, now, this is interesting, isn't it? The Falcon Northwest Tiki puts up the highest frame-rates we've ever seen from a non-overclocked pre-built system in 3DMark's game tests, and it even boasts a higher graphics score than any of our GeForce RTX 3090 machines, but it still falls behind Falcon Northwest's own Talon system in overall score. Why could that be, do you think?
It's not represented here, but the difference mostly comes down to the third Time Spy test, which is focused on CPU geometry performance. The Talon's power-thirsty sixteen-core Alder Lake CPU demolishes all challengers in that test, which significantly increases its overall 3DMark score.
Still, the Tiki's FPS in the two game-like tests best all comers, even those equipped with more powerful GeForce RTX 3090 GPUs. That bears out what we've observed while playing games on the machine—it's an absolute beast. You'll see a bit more of this in the actual benchmarks below.
Middle Earth: Shadow Of War Benchmarks
Middle Earth: Shadow of War is getting a bit long in the tooth, but this fun and beautiful title, set in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings universe, still makes a great test of DirectX 11 performance. To test the Tiki relative to other systems, we set the resolution to 2560x1440 and turned the visuals up to the Ultra preset.
Even at 2560×1440, Shadow of War is notoriously CPU-limited on modern high-end graphics cards. That's surely part of the reason that our Tiki, with its super-fast Ryzen 7 5800X3D, outpaces two GeForce RTX 3090 machines in our testing. We don't record minimum FPS from this game because the results are pretty random, but subjectively speaking, this game is ridiculously smooth on this system. Let's try a more demanding test.
In 4K Ultra HD, the Tiki maintains its place as the second-fastest system we've ever tested in this game. Only Falcon's own Talon system, a larger machine with a Core i9 CPU and top-end GeForce GPU, is able to pull ahead. The performance of the Tiki well outstrips that of the Alienware Aurora R10 sporting a Ryzen 7 5800X, although that machine's Radeon RX 6800 XT is also slower (specifically at 4K resolution) than the Founders Edition RTX 3080 Ti in the Tiki.
Shadow Of The Tomb Raider Performance
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is currently the final entry in the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy, although another entry, this time running on Epic's Unreal Engine 5, was just announced last month. Since we don't have comparison data for that newer title—after all, it's not even out yet—we'll test this one again.
No real surprises here—the Tiki comes within striking distance of the larger Talon machines equipped with faster GPUs, and actually puts up the highest minimum frame rate. Even with all of this game's ray-traced lighting and shadows enabled, it's no match for our high-powered GeForce cards. Better bump this one to 4K for this machine and enjoy the crispy.
Gears 5 Benchmarks
Gears of War was a graphical tour de force when it released on the Xbox 360 in 2006. As the showpiece title for Epic's third full-number revision for Unreal Engine 3, it showcased stellar visual effects. Now, 16 years later, Gears 5 may not be the showpiece its ancestor was, but it's still a gorgeous game. Given the potency of this PC, we skipped the "High" preset testing this time around and went for straight for Ultra.
Gears 5 is a game that makes ready use of all available CPU cores, loves fast single-threaded performance, and as a result of this efficient programming, will use every ounce of GPU horsepower available. As a result, the Tiki's performance isn't as dominating here as in the other titles. The extra CPU cores in the Core i9-10900K help the Aurora R11's GeForce RTX 3090 card flex its muscles, and it comes out ahead of the Tiki for the first time.
Likewise, it seems Gears prefers either the higher clock rate of the standard 5800X or the RDNA 2 architecture over the hardware in the Tiki, as the Aurora R10 outpaces the little Falcon Northwest box in 2560×1440. That story flips when you move to 4K UHD, though. Notably, in 4K, the Tiki maintains a higher minimum framerate than the 11th-generation Talon model, too. Frankly, any machine that can maintain a minimum framerate over 60 FPS in this game at these settings is damn fast.
Metro Exodus Benchmarks
Metro Exodus is based on author Dmitry Glukhovsky's series of Metro novels that started with Metro 2033 back in 2005. It's become something of a tradition for the Metro games to receive updated re-releases just a few scant years after the original release, and that's the case for Exodus, too.We're testing with the original release here, though, simply because that's the data we have to compare against. If you were actually going to play Metro Exodus in 2022, we'd definitely recommend the Enhanced Edition, as long as you have the requisite DXR-capable hardware—it both runs and looks better than the original recipe.
If you've read to this point instead of skipping ahead, you already know the story here. The Tiki puts up minimum frame rates equivalent to the fastest machine we've ever tested, and its average is less than 2 FPS behind. It is functionally equivalent performance to a GeForce RTX 3090 machine, while the 3D V-Cache empowered Ryzen CPU keeps minimum performance nice and steady. The gap in average FPS beteween this machine and our RTX 3080-equipped test bench really demonstrates how confusing the "3080 Ti" moniker actually is.
Falcon Northwest Tiki (2022) - But Will It Run My Game? Absolutely, Yes.
We tested a lot more games than just those four on Falcon Northwest's tiny tower of power. Attempting to tease out any foibles in the system's design, we ran it through the gantlet, trying every kind of title we could think of. So doing, we got a pretty good idea for how the system runs quite a few games.
Above, we've placed a list of tested and confirmed game settings for a raft of popular titles. Where not otherwise indicated, these settings target 60 FPS at the listed resolution, although most of them run quite a bit faster than that.
Actually, this chart is kind of silly given that every single game is listed at 3840×2160. True, some of the games do need DLSS to maintain playable performance at the given settings, but not many. The truth is that the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is overkill for most games at this point in time, and we love it for just that reason.
While we tested these games at these settings, we can't guarantee that every part of each game will run flawlessly with the listed settings. As such, performance may or may not fall below what you consider acceptable with the listed settings. So yes, your mileage may vary. The above table is just to give prospective buyers an idea of what kind of performance you can expect out of Falcon Northwest's Tiki, in this specific configuration, across a myriad of game titles.
