Xi MTower nVIDIA FX4500
January 2006 By Phil Harrison

Price/Performance 5 stars *****
Performance 5 stars *****

ATI submitted a system from Xi in our main benchmark last spring so that we could test their FireGL V7100 graphics card. Xi is another manufacturer of systems largely for the gaming and entry level CAD market allowing users to specify all the components in their systems. They did well the last time around so they decided to submit a system on their own, this time with nVIDIA graphics. The Xi Mtower system was configured with an AMD Athlon 64 FX57 processor running at 2.88 GHz, 2 GB of 400 HZ memory and twin Western Digital 160 GB disk drives in a RAID 0 configuration. The case of the Xi is large with lots of room for expansion with 2 free 3.5” drive bays and 3 free 5.25” drive bays offering plenty of space for additional storage. The Xi system is not certified by Dassault Systèmes to run CATIA; however we found absolutely no issues in our extensive test suite. The system gave superb system performance with a CATBench2005S score of 75.8, by far the best score we have ever seen. Performance was amazing in our analysis, migration and larger scenarios. The graphics performance of the nVIDIA FX4500 graphics card was excellent with a CATbench2005G score of 82.2 but considering the price premium over the FX1400 probably not worth it. Combining the graphics and systems scores yields an overall CATBench2005 score of 79. The system scored 76.9 in our digital mockup benchmark. Priced at a $4,442 the Xi system surpassed all other systems that we have tested by a significant margin. AMD’s Athlon processor takes CATIA performance to a new level and we award our first dual 5 start award this year to this Xi system.