CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 08/12/2005
- Updated on: 11/07/2009
The $3,899 ABS Ultimate X8 could never be mistaken for a standard desktop rig. The system uses Thermaltake's Armor VA8000BWS case, a monstrous full-tower chassis done up in black brushed aluminum, complete with the requisite side-panel window and blue-lit cooling fans. With Intel's Pentium Extreme Edition 840 dual-core processor and dual 256MB GeForce 7800 GTX video cards, this desk-hogging system commands a premium price. And while it might blow away low-end PCs, it lacked the performance of similarly configured systems we've tested.
The front bezel of the Ultimate X8's case gives the system a decidedly different look; the 10 front-mounted drive bays are protected by two half doors that fold out on either side. A perforated metal plate covers each empty drive bay to maximize airflow, except for the bottom bay, which has a drawer big enough to hold a few CDs or a small set of headphones. If 10 drive bays aren't enough, an internal cage mounted on the upper rear of the chassis holds 3 additional drives. A total of four system fans (one for intake, three for exhaust) combine with the processor and video card fans to keep things cool inside without producing too much of a racket.
A small round panel on the top of the system pops up to reveal two USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, and two audio jacks. While this is handy for connecting cameras, headsets, and other peripherals that can rest atop the case, it may be difficult to get to if you store the Ultimate X8 under a desk. Rear-panel connectors consist of four USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, two Ethernet ports, an external serial ATA connection, and jacks for 8-channel audio, including dual S/PDIF audio connections (an increasingly popular digital audio standard). Another FireWire port comes by way of the Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS sound card, and a daughtercard provides two more USB 2.0 connections and a game port for those of you with legacy game controllers. There's plenty of room to work inside the case, even though there's only one open PCI slot, and all cables are neatly tied down and out of the way.
At the heart of the Ultimate X8 is Intel's Pentium Extreme Edition 840 dual-core processor running at 3.2GHz, 1GB of Corsair 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM, and an Asus P5ND2-SLI motherboard based on Nvidia's Nforce 4 SLI Intel Edition chipset. The high-end hardware serves the Ultimate X8 well, but not as well as those in some similar high-end PCs. In the dual core-oriented multimedia tests, the ABS Ultimate X8 posted slower times compared to other dual-core and even some single-core systems. On our Photoshop CS test, the single-core Velocity Micro Gamer's Edge DualX was 7 percent faster, while the Alienware Aurora 7500, with a dual-core AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ came in 16 percent faster. Things looked better for Apple iTunes encoding, where the Ultimate X8 was 25 percent faster than the Velocity Micro, although it was no match for the Apple Power Mac G5, which, true to its reputation as a media-friendly machine, was 77 percent faster. While the ABS Ultimate X8 sits in the top tier of performance for multimedia and general computing tasks, with a little more care and tweaking it could have outscored other PCs in its class.
With dual 256MB GeForce 7800 GTX video cards running in SLI mode, the X8 provides powerful 3D graphics muscle. In our Half-Life 2 tests, compared to other twin GeForce 7800 GTX SLI-based offerings, the Ultimate X8 came in 40 percent behind the single-core Velocity Micro Gamer's Edge DualX, which has a 2.8GHz AMD Athlon 64 FX-57, and 28 percent behind the Maingear F131, which has a dual-core 2.4GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ CPU.
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