Multivision Ionix Ultima 35

Multivision has attracted a lot of attention with its cut-throat power PCs and, on the face of it, the Ionix Ultima 35 is no exception. With a 2.2GHz Athlon XP 3200+, DVD burner and GeForce FX 5900 Ultra for just £1,299, you're certainly getting bang for your buck.

Based around an MSI K7N2 motherboard with the second revision of the nForce2, the Ionix Ultima 35 also boasts a 400MHz system bus. However, while this may look good on paper, any performance increase is effectively strangled by the CAS 3 latency of the Multivision's memory modules. But at least the chipset's dual-channel capability has been used to full advantage, with the 512MB of RAM being spilt across two DIMMs, leaving a socket free.

And it isn't as if the Ionix Ultima 35 is slow. Scoring 1.91 overall in our 2D benchmarks, it's fast enough, although it can't compete with the incredible 2.27 from the similarly specified Mesh Matrix 3200+ Power (see issue 105, p57). Part of the reason is Nvidia's graphics card drivers. The Multivision notably struggled with our Excel Business test, where a round of graph drawing stresses the graphic card's DirectDraw capabilities. However, this is a minor complaint, and you're unlikely to notice the difference in real-world use.

Where you will notice a difference is in 3D games, and with a GeForce FX 5900 Ultra (see issue 105, p72), the Ionix Ultima 35 ought to be the king of the 3D castle. However, the 3DMark2001 SE score of 16,869 in 32-bit XGA is notably behind the 17,512 from the identically priced Dell Dimension 8300 3.0GHz (see issue 105, p56). The FX 5900 takes off when you start enabling the extra features, though, and this is demonstrated by a score of 12,762 over the Dell's 11,865 with 4x anti-aliasing and 8x anisotropic filtering enabled.

But the FX 5900 is also Nvidia's flagship DirectX 9 card, and this is where the Multivision's speed is unclear. We had to patch 3DMark03 after FutureMark claimed that Nvidia had 'cheated' with its drivers, which it then back-tracked on, saying they contained 'application-specific optimisations'. This reduced the score from 5,986 to 4,785, and most notably brought the Mother Nature frame rate down from 36.9fps to 19.1fps. It's difficult to know which score to believe, but it's worth noting that 3DMark03 is a completely synthetic benchmark, although it still shows that the FX 5900 may not be as future-proof as you'd want. Thankfully, when it came to real games, Unreal Tournament 2003 returned an excellent flyby score of 215fps at the same resolution and felt incredibly responsive too.

With all that speedy gaming action, the NEC 1860NX TFT lets the side down a little. Its 30ms response time is too tardy to make the most of the graphics performance, although it's enough for DVD watching with minimal ghosting. At least you get an 18in screen. The viewing angles are also reasonable, and the display is pleasantly vivid and crisp. In terms of style, the silver bezel matches the system too, along with the black Logitech keyboard and mouse and, of course, the system case itself.

The sci-fi good looks of the case aren't to everyone's taste, but at least it isn't beige, and the blue neon flash certainly provides a talking point. You'll be able to hear yourself think too, as while the FX 5900 produces a fair amount of noise, the case is lined with Akasa noise-reduction matting.

The side panels are also easy to remove, which makes inside maintenance easier. It's tidily built, although some of the internal metal edges were a bit sharp and not as well rounded off as the rest of the case. Externally, the system is a minimal affair, complete with blacked-out drive fascias, but there are two easy-access USB 2 ports and a FireWire connector via a concealed side compartment.