Review: Hi-Grade Ultis Tachyon Core 2 Extreme PC

Hi-Grade is quick off the blocks with its Ultis Tachyon PC centred on a Core 2 Extreme X6800 running at 2.93GHz.

The Core 2 Extreme certainly packs a punch with a front-side bus speed of 1,066MHz and 4MB of cache. Although the slightly slower 2.67GHz Core 2 Duo, this processor is the first desktop CPU to incorporate Intel’s Core Microarchitecture enhancements.

You can read more about Core Microarchitecture and the new processors in general in our Core 2 Extreme and Core 2 Duo review.

Hi-Grade has surrounded the Core 2 Extreme with an impressive array of components, not least of which is the graphics setup.

The Nvidia Geforce 7950GX2 graphics card houses two individual cores in an SLI configuration and played no small part in the system's score of 14,302 in 3Dmark05. This just beats the previous king of the hill, Chillblast's Atlantis Fusion .

It was a similar story with our other benchmarks. The Core 2 Extreme powered the PC to a score of 391 is Sysmark (some 71 points higher than the aformentioned Chillblast) and 7,944 in PCmark05 (this time beating the Chillblast by over 1,000 points).

Without doubt, this is the fastest system we've ever seen.

Moving away from performance, the case has a metallic finish but feels very plastic to touch. We were also hoping for something a bit more inspiring considering the groundbreaking components housed within.

Four USB ports and one Firewire can be found at the front of the case along with a headphone and microphone sockets.

While the cabling inside is neat and tidy allowing for easy access to the motherboard, the placement of the fans isn’t great.

The front fan will only cool hard drives located at the bottom of the column of 3.5in slot bays. The primary processor fan is louder than normal, but it is cooling an incredibly powerful chip.

This machine is optimised for speed and Hi-Grade hasn’t neglected a common laggard in PCs, namely the hard disk. Two serial ATA (Sata) disks are installed in the case, one a 10,000rpm Western Digital 150GB Raptor and the other a 7,200rpm Western Digital 500GB.

The faster Raptor drive hosts Windows and is intended for you to run games from, while the 500GB disk provides acres of storage room for videos, music, photos etc.

The Intel 975 motherboard used in this setup leaves plenty of room for expansion with two free Ram slots, two free PCI and two free PCI Express slots. Somewhat unusually for such a recently designed motherboard, it also features a rarely used parallel port.

The 975 chipset supports Intel Matrix Storage Technology so, although not implemented by Hi-Grade, you could install another hard drive and setup a Raid system.

The combination of the Core 2 Extreme, 975 motherboard and the integrated Gigabit Ethernet card afford the Tachyon certification as a Viiv PC. However, you'll need to purchase a TV tuner to use it as a home-entertainment PC.

Hi-Grade has supplied Windows XP Home and the free Open Office with this system, presumably in an effort to keep extra costs to a minimum. We would have preferred XP Pro on such a high-end system as this.

In an indication of just how expensive this new processor is, this system is priced over £2,000 - and that doesn't include a monitor.

We think it would be better for those who aren’t desperate to get their hands on a Core 2 Extreme to hold off until closer to Christmas when prices settle and Viiv PCs start shipping with HD-DVD or Blu-ray drives.

But if you want a stupidly fast PC and have a fair bit of cash to spare, Hi-Grade's Ultis Tachyon certainly delivers.

Related PC and processor reviews:
Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 Core 2 Duo/Extreme motherboard
A new motherboard supporting Intel's new processors

Chillblast Atlantis Fusion review
A quiet and supremely powerful PC

Intel Core 2 Duo/Extreme processor review
The fastest processors currently available

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