PC Club Enpower Sabre Extreme: E6600 Made Easy
by Jarred Walton on August 29, 2006 4:40 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Benchmark Setup
At present, we don't really have results from any configurations directly comparable to the PC Club Sabre Extreme. We will be including the results from the ABS Ultimate X9, but keep in mind that it costs about three times as much as the Sabre Extreme. Due to changes in the benchmarks being utilized, we will confine our results to these two systems at present. The overall performance of the Sabre Extreme is actually secondary to the various other points we have already covered, so we're only going to run a selection of the available benchmarks in order to verify that performance is acceptable and in line with what we expect for the components used.
We will be reviewing additional Core 2 Duo systems (and AMD systems) in the future, and we will continue to include the results from the Sabre Extreme and the Ultimate X9 in those reviews. Unlike individual component testing, we are looking at the entire package, and it should come as no surprise that higher costs bring higher performance. Design, features, reliability, support, component selection, and price are all factors, and we will do our best to evaluate all of these areas in our system vendor reviews.
At present, we don't really have results from any configurations directly comparable to the PC Club Sabre Extreme. We will be including the results from the ABS Ultimate X9, but keep in mind that it costs about three times as much as the Sabre Extreme. Due to changes in the benchmarks being utilized, we will confine our results to these two systems at present. The overall performance of the Sabre Extreme is actually secondary to the various other points we have already covered, so we're only going to run a selection of the available benchmarks in order to verify that performance is acceptable and in line with what we expect for the components used.
| PC Club EN-SE6 Test Configuration | |
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.40GHz 4MB Cache 25% Overclock (3.00GHz - voids warranty) |
| RAM | 2x512MB Transcend PC2-5300 JM367Q643A-6 DDR2-667 1.9V 5-5-5-13 Timings |
| Hard Drive(s) | Western Digital 250GB WD2500KS SE16 |
| System Platform Drivers | Intel - 8.1.1.1001 |
| Video Card: | 1 x MSI 7900GT |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA 91.31 |
| CPU Cooling: | Retail Intel HSF |
| Power Supply: | Allied 350W |
| Motherboard: | Gigibyte GA-965P-DS3 - F4 BIOS (Newer builds use MSI P965 board) |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Home SP2 |
| ABS Test Configuration | |
| Processor | Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz 4MB Cache) 20% Overclock (3.52GHz - ABS Warranty) |
| RAM | 2 x 1GB Corsair CM2X1024-6400C4 DDR2-960 5-5-5-15 2.2V for Overclock DDR2-800 4-4-4-12 2.0V Stock |
| Hard Drive(s) | 2 x 150GB WD Raptor RAID 0 |
| System Platform Drivers | Intel - 8.1.1.1001 |
| Video Cards: | 2 x ATI X1900XT (Master+Standard) CrossFire on Intel 975X |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 6.8 |
| CPU Cooling: | Gigabyte GH-WIU01 Liquid Cooling |
| Power Supply: | Enermax Liberty 620W |
| Motherboard: | Intel 975XBX (Intel 975X) |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
We will be reviewing additional Core 2 Duo systems (and AMD systems) in the future, and we will continue to include the results from the Sabre Extreme and the Ultimate X9 in those reviews. Unlike individual component testing, we are looking at the entire package, and it should come as no surprise that higher costs bring higher performance. Design, features, reliability, support, component selection, and price are all factors, and we will do our best to evaluate all of these areas in our system vendor reviews.
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koomo - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - link
Hi Jared,Any expectations for when the next mid-range buyer's guide will be posted? (Last one was May 9th, just prior to AM2 and Core 2 Duo).
It sure would be nice to see one juat after you all have tested the soon-to-be released ATI lineup. I'll be very interested to see how power requirements compare between the mid-range NVIDIA and ATI cards, as well as comparative noise levels (will the new ATI blowers help that much?) Thanks!
Very nice review, BTW.
Turin39789 - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - link
Get in in under $1000 and We'll talkKorruptioN - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - link
It appears that the three right side holes are not utilized in screwing the motherboard down to the tray? They instead run the optical drive IDE cable underneath.Also, the choice of using an ALLIED PSU is a bad one -- consider it bottom-end generic.
QueBert - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - link
I consider your statement to be generic. Allied does make a lot of entry level, very basic PSU's. But, they make some http://www.pcclub.com/product_details.cfm?itemno=A...">great ones.. Infact. the one I just linked to, replaced a Enermax that died in my system. Was very quiet, had plenty of power, and overall is a PSU I'd recommend to anyone looking. Allied makes a ton of different PSU's, some of they might very well be crap, I won't dispute. But the one I own, ran a system with 4 HD's, 2 Opticals, an X800, 2 120MM and 80MM fan and more then enough power left over. Powmax makes "bottom end PSU's" there's a HUGE difference between "bottom end" and "generic"A good # of the barebone cases PC-Club sell come with Allied, I build pc's for people for a living, and I've had very few problems, with even their lower end psu's *shrug*
Allied gets a bad rap, which I'm sure is for reasons that date back 5+ years? Based off that line of thinking, Maxtor makes the worst HD's ever...
yacoub - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - link
Good review, Jarred. Nice to see how a pre-built system can perform in a review that covers all the basics and even overclocking.Harkonnen - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - link
On the internals and construction page, third paragraph. PSU is typed as SPU."If you want to do more than that, you may find that you need to replace the default SPU with a beefier unit."
JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - link
I dunno - I kinda like the way SPU rolls off the tongue. :Dchunkychun - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - link
Is it really a great time to upgrade? It seems that directx 10 would require you to upgrade your graphics card realitively soon. Should people just wait?JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - link
DX10 may be important for games, but there's always something coming in the near future. I'm not aware of any games that are going to require DX10/WGF2 any time soon. I mean, we're only now getting a reasonable number of games that require SM3.0 (just in time for DX10, right?) At the ultra-high-end, it's probably worth waiting, but for mid-range a 7900 GT or X1900 XT level card is going to last quite a while at moderate detail settings.We need Vista before we'll get DX10, and I'm not holding my breath for an early 2007 Vista launch. I'm betting on closer to March. That's over six months away, so really I think now *is* a good time to upgrade... provided you haven't already done so in the past year or two. If you have a 6800/X800 GPU or better, you can probably wait. If you have an Athlon XP/Pentium 4 (prior to Prescott) or earlier CPU, upgrading to Core 2 wouldn't be a bad move. Maybe wait another month for prices to stabilize, but that's about it.
bamacre - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - link
Well said, JW.