Xi MTower PCIe
@Xi Computer
800.432.0486
www.xicomputer.com/
Price: $4,149

The version of the Xi MTower PCIe system that @Xi Computer submitted for this article is housed in a compact, sturdy black mid-tower case measuring 17.2" x 8" x 19.2" (H x W x D) and offers easy, tool-free access to the system components. This particular system has a fan-speed control on the back for a water-cooling fan.

Although I haven't been thrilled with any of the water-cooling solutions I've seen, the Thermaltake Silent Water system used in the MTower PCIe system is integrated and sealed, and it requires little or no user maintenance. This subsystem made for a very quiet operating workstation.

Inside the box, the MTower PCIe is based on an EVGA NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI motherboard with an NVIDIA 680i chipset. This motherboard includes a third PCIe slot for the installation of a graphic processor (not yet particularly useful for CAD). The motherboard is housed an Intel Core2 Extreme X6800 2.93GHz processor with Silent Water Cooling, and that was overclocked to 3.20GHz. The dual-core Extreme has a 4MB cache with a dynamic allocation feature that gives a single active core as much cache as necessary.

The MTower PCIe included 2GB of DDR2 1,000MHz PC2-8000 RAM out of a possible 8GB and included two Western Digital Raptor 74GB hard disks joined in a RAID 0 configuration for a total of 148GB of hard drive capacity.

Graphics for the system were accommodated by the XXX version of the XFX GeForce 8800 GTX, which is based on the NVIDIA GeForce 8800, and incorporated a total of 768MB of DDR3 memory. The system supports two video cards, showing the potential for an SLI configuration (though only one card was provided for this evaluation). This system is the first I've tested with this moderately priced graphics card and, as the test results show, it performs quite well.

The MTower PCIe produced a total index score of 292 on the Cadalyst C2006 benchmark running under AutoCAD 2005 with Service Pack 1 installed. This score is the highest of any system I've ever tested—and this result with no specific AutoCAD settings available in the graphics card driver.

Next, I tested the system with Autodesk 3ds Max 8 with Service Pack 3 installed, running the MAXBench 4 benchmark. With the default video driver and 3ds Max set for the OpenGL driver, I was able to generate a combined high/low average score of 94.85. This particular graphics card has no 3ds Max–specific accelerated driver, so I moved on to the Direct3D driver test. Using the default 3ds Max Direct3D driver, I generated a combined high/low average of 303.64—also the highest of any system in this roundup. Finally, I tested the system with the ProE-04 Viewset of SPEC ViewPerf 9.03 and produced a fairly lackluster score of 15.19 for this benchmark. All told, however, the numbers were good enough to earn the system an A in the performance category.

Pricing for the Xi MTower PCIe system is $4,149 equipped as tested, the least expensive of the systems submitted for this article, earning it an A+ grade for pricing. The system price includes three years of warranty coverage for both parts and labor and one year of onsite coverage.

With its dazzling performance numbers, moderate pricing, good warranty coverage, extensive expandability options and high-quality components throughout, the Xi MTower PCIe system earned its rating. Highly Recommended.