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.