Review: Hi-Grade Ultis Tachyon QX6700 PC

This Hi-Grade PC hides something new at its heart: Intel's new quad-core chip, the Core 2 Extreme QX6700.

With the gigahertz wars seemingly over, it marks another step forward in ramping up the number of cores in a processor; multiple cores allow you to do more at the same time without a computer feeling slow or unresponsive. Incredibly, Intel hopes to continue increasing the number of cores to 80 in the next five years.

The Core 2 Quad is actually two Core 2 Duos fitted together in a single package. As a result, the L2 cache is made up of two 4 MB caches. What this means to the end user is a power-hungry CPU. It has a 130W power envelope; double the 65W a Core 2 Duo draws. 130W was typical of high-end, hot and hungry Pentium D processor, but at least you now get four fast cores for the power drawn.

The Core 2 Extreme QX6700 is an unlocked processor aimed at hardware enthusiasts, which means it should be easily overclocked. The clock multiplier is set to 10 as standard so the clock speed of 2.66MHz results in the processor running at 2,66GHz (10x 2.66MHz).

We managed to adjust the clock multiplier to 11, which resulted in a speed of 2.93GHz. Adjusting the FSB (front side bus) allowed us to boot the system at over 3GHz without a voltage increase.

However, at 3GHz the system behaved erratically and performance results didn't improve. We expect retail systems to clock over 3GHz flawlessly, but due to the limited time we had with the system we couldn't investigate the problem further. Core 2 Duo systems are fantastic overclockers, but the QX6700 requires more cooling so won't be quite so successful without additional cooling.

The machine houses two serial ATA hard disks. A fast 150GB 10,000rpm disk is loaded with Windows and main applications, which allows for games and programs to run at speed, while a 500GB 7,200rpm disk provides acres of space for photos, music and videos.

The Ultis Tachyon QX6700 is no slouch when it comes to games thanks to an SLI-based Nvidia Geforce 7950GX2 graphics card. It produced a 3Dmark05 score of 14,169; although hugely impressive, it's nowhere near the king-of-the-hill 3GHz Chillblast Fusion Hardcore X1900XTX Crossfire, which set a lab record of 17,388, but it is comparable to other systems with the Geforce 7950GX2.

Quad-core architecture can cause problems with some applications. Due to this, we couldn't run our usual Far Cry benchmark and it was a similar story with Call of Duty 2. Once game developers get their hands on the new processors, patches will no doubt follow to allow compatibility.

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