ABS Ultimate X9: Core 2 Extreme Hits a Speed Bump

Final Thoughts

Overall, the ABS Ultimate X9 is an impressive system. It looks great and offers record-breaking performance... in CPU limited applications. If you want guaranteed and warrantied out of box performance that's 20% faster than the fastest official CPU currently offered by Intel, the price of around $4500 really isn't all that bad. However, if you are an enthusiast and prefer to fly by the seat of your pants, it shouldn't be too difficult to match and even exceed the performance offered by ABS and other system vendors, and save some money at the same time. There were some other concerns as well, unfortunately.

If there's one weak point in the Ultimate X9, we would have to say it's the Intel motherboard. It isn't a bad motherboard, but it has some flaws. The onboard audio really needs work. Purchasing a soundcard fixes that issue, but for a system that comes with a 20% overclock from the manufacturer, we would much rather see a true enthusiast motherboard like the ASUS P5W-DH. Not only can that allow higher overclocks, but it should also do so with greater stability in our experience. The Intel motherboard is limited to a maximum overclock of 50%, and even at 25% the system experienced definite stability problems. In our own testing of the motherboard, we were able to achieve a 22% overclock with full stability, but that pales in comparison to the 36% overclock we achieved using the ASUS motherboard. The ASUS motherboard was also able to run with a front side bus speed of up to 400 MHz (1600 MHz quad pumped) by using a lower CPU multiplier. Finally, the Intel 975XBX tends to take a lot longer to POST than most other motherboards, with a delay of over 30 seconds before the OS even begins loading. Intel is regarded as providing some of the most stable motherboards around, but that doesn't always make them the best, particularly for enthusiast level systems.

The water cooling of the GPUs is another weak point, as all indications are that the GPUs get too hot during long gaming sessions. Given that we have successfully overclocked Core 2 Extreme processors to 4.0 GHz on high-end air cooling, and also looking at the power results, the X1900 cards are capable of drawing a lot of power and they need better waterflow in order to stay at acceptable temperatures. It's a shame as the water cooling does wonders for reducing noise levels. We'd prefer a water cooling solution that only cools the GPUs if that's what it takes to get 100% stability. Besides, as the benchmarks clearly show, the GPUs are a far bigger bottleneck in games than the CPU, and going from a 2.66 GHz Core 2 to a 3.52 GHz Core 2 only improved performance by up to 6% in games at higher resolutions.

There are also some other areas that give us cause for concern, though these are not necessarily ABS's fault. First, Core 2 Duo/Extreme systems do not seem to be fully optimized when running ATI graphics solutions. Performance is good, but our testing with NVIDIA SLI and Core 2 Extreme indicates that ATI cards currently don't perform as well as they could on the platform. Another ATI issue that was much more pronounced on the ABS Ultimate X9 is the slow startup time associated with loading the ATI drivers and the .Net framework; once the Windows desktop appears, there is another ~30 second delay before the ATI drivers are fully loaded and the system becomes useable. (This delay is much longer than what we have encountered on RD580 CrossFire platforms and is far more noticeable, despite the fact that in other areas the ABS X9 is clearly faster.) If you don't plan on rebooting your system very often, it may not be a big deal, but it did become a little irritating during testing. Finally, the issues we encountered when first trying to run Oblivion solidify our feeling that the ATI CrossFire and Core 2 combination is still immature. We expect all of the issues to be ironed out in the future, but the future also holds faster GPUs, processors, and new motherboards.

It is difficult to recommend any computer system that costs over $4000, as the vast majority of people don't really need that much processing power. However, if you're in the market for a new über-computer and you don't want to build it yourself, the ABS Ultimate X9 is at least worthy of consideration. Given the current GPU limitations in most of the games we've tested, not to mention a couple crashes, we would certainly recommend saving the $500 and getting the un-overclocked version. With the water cooling and all of the other extras that ABS includes, you should be able to overclock the system on your own if the need/desire arises, though the GPUs may still present a problem. If you're just not willing to risk overclocking without a manufacturer warranty, you're probably better off sticking with a stock speed Core 2 Extreme anyway. Spending $1500 for a fast CPU in a system that isn't 100% stable is very difficult to justify in our minds.

The major benefit of buying a system from a company like ABS rather than building it yourself is that someone else gets to do all the dirty work. Many enthusiasts find that to be one of the "fun" parts of getting a new computer, but for those with less free time or less inclination, system vendors like ABS provide a great out of box experience. You get the system in about a week, and when it arrives you can be up and running in 15 minutes or less. ABS has informed us that we are using one of their first water-cooled GPU systems, and they are working on tuning the system. Hopefully, they can address the concerns we've raised, because the system is otherwise a great piece of hardware. With better waterflow to the GPUs, that should hopefully remove the few instabilities we encountered, and at that point you would have a very fast and stable system.

The one question we haven't yet answered is how the ABS Ultimate X9 compares to offerings from other system vendors. If $3000-$4000 is too much for you to spend on a computer, we've got a couple more Core 2 system reviews coming that will cover other portions of the computing spectrum. In the meantime, we welcome your comments and suggestions.