Product Reviews

Sometimes, the price can tell you everything about a PC. A £500 system, for example, is likely to be a reliable but unspectacular workhorse, while one costing closer to £1,200 is going to be capable of anything you can throw at it. But when a PC costs a little over £2,000 and doesn't even come with a monitor, it's difficult to know quite what to expect. A jewel-encrusted case, perhaps? Umpteen graphics cards running in tandem for photo-realistic gaming? A built-in coffee-maker? As it turns out, the Ultis has none of these things, but what it does have is power - more than we've ever seen, or could even imagine for a desktop PC.

Four heads are better than two

The Ultis is so fast because of the top-end components Hi-Grade has used. For instance, the 2GB of RAM will keep Windows XP - and Vista, when it eventually appears - running smoothly, but the real jewel in the crown is the processor. At the heart of the Ultis is the new (and impressively named) Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad QX6700. With four processor cores (standard Core 2 Duo chips have just two) each running at 2.6GHz, it should deliver unparalleled performance and it scored an unheard of 228% in our 2D benchmarks. This means there's no application the Ultis won't be able to take in its giant-sized stride. The only downside with this level of performance is that Intel's new quad-core chip runs hot and the Ultis needs two case fans, a cooler for the CPU and then more fans on the graphics

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card to keep it cool. As a result, this isn't a quiet PC.

Hi-Grade has gone equally all out with the graphics card. It's nVidia's 7950 GX2 card, which means two physical graphics cards with one PCI-Express connector. Each board has its own graphics chip and fan, which means noise increases yet further, but the payback is a machine that will play any 3D game currently available at its highest quality settings.

We were delighted with the results we got from Call of Duty 2 - even at 1600 x 1200 with the quality settings cranked to maximum, it ran very smoothly. At the less demanding settings used our 3D benchmarks, the Ultis scored an astonishing 219% - we wouldn't have believed it unless we'd seen it.

Long-term storage

The Ultis' hard disks are equally over the top. The C: drive, holding Windows and its applications, is a 150GB Western Digital Raptor - a name that holds serious kudos with PC performance junkies the world over. 150GB isn't much when it comes to music and movie storage though, and so the Ultis has a second 500GB drive for holding your files. The optical drives are hidden behind tidy-looking flaps on the front panel and there's also a multi-format memory card reader.

So far so good, as long as you (or your bank manager) can stomach the price. But sadly, the Ultis' warranty gives us real cause for concern. A single year of on-site cover is all very well and good for cheaper systems, but when you're paying for a premium PC like this, you have every right to expect to be coddled for an awful lot longer. This is particularly important given the specification - should you be unlucky enough for that processor to fail 366 days after buying the Ultis, a replacement will cost several hundred quid.

The Ultis is an awesome PC and if money is no object, it will grant you bragging rights down the pub for some time to come. It is, however, merely a sign of things to come from Intel and you can bet that while PCs of this performance cost a premium today, they'll be £599 in a year or two's time.