CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 03/01/2004
- Updated on: 01/02/2010
- Released on: 02/02/2004
The Cyberpower Gamer Infinity 9900 Pro is available in several different cases; our test system arrived in the black-aluminum X-SuperAlien case that has all the room and expandability you'd expect from a full-tower case. The front panel features plastic ornamentation that plays off the ever-popular alien-head motif (see Alienware's Area-51 or iBuyPower's Gamer Extreme). Behind its red eyes, we found it to be a fully functional case for any upgrade and expansion plans that gamers and overclockers may have in mind.
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| Though it lacks a custom feel, the X-SuperAlien case provides room for expansion. |
The 500-watt power supply offers plenty of juice to max out the case's 12 drive bays (7 of which are available for expansion) and make other upgrades. We particularly like the placement of the five 3.5-inch internal hard drive bays: they face the side instead of facing toward the motherboard, which makes swapping them out easier. On the other hand, our test system's three free PCI slots were hard to get to because of the tangle of wires inside the case (a modem and a sound card occupy the other two slots).
Our biggest gripe with the Cyberpower Gamer Infinity 9900 Pro is the racket it creates. With six cooling fans (two at the rear, one on top, one on the side panel, one for the CPU, and one for the power supply), the system is almost as loud as a small air conditioner. Worse, the fans didn't appear to throttle back all that much when the system dropped into power-saving modes during our anecdotal tests. The two silver knobs on the front panel let you manually control the intake fans on the front panel and the exhaust fans on the side and back panels, which helped dampen the noise a bit. The front-panel LCD reports the temperature of the CPU and the hard drive, helping prevent overheating.
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| The silver knobs let you throttle back the noisy case fans, but be sure to monitor the system's temperature on the small status screen to prevent a meltdown. |
By way of its Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card, the Gamer Infinity 9900 Pro provides a wealth of audio connections, including an S/PDIF (digital audio) port, multiple analog speaker outputs, a microphone input, and a FireWire port. Its video outputs are equally diverse: the system's Radeon 9800 XT graphics card serves up VGA, DVI, and S-Video. Also, on the back panel, there's a standard set of PS/2 mouse/keyboard ports and six USB 2.0 ports, along with legacy serial and parallel ports and both 56Kbps and Ethernet connectors. Around front, below the door that hides the system's optical drives and floppy drive, are two additional USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, and two audio jacks.
Not all cutting-edge gaming PCs need cost $3,000 or more. Take the Cyberpower Gamer Infinity 9900 Pro, which at $2,399, is a relatively affordable system with the goods for gamers. It pairs a 3.2EGHz Intel Pentium 4 processor (a.k.a. Prescott) on an Intel D875PB2 motherboard with 1GB of Corsair DDR400 memory. The top-of-the-line 256MB ATI Radeon 9800 XT graphics card provides the performance needed to play the very latest games on the bundled ViewSonic VG800 18-inch LCD (though serious gamers should still consider the faster response times of a CRT).
The Gamer Infinity 9900 Pro's emphasis on gaming extends to the keyboard that Cyberpower chose to bundle with our test system: the Ideazon Zboard with exchangeable key sets. The Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer key set overlay is the default, but Cyberpower also includes the Crossfire Gaming key set. If you don't plan to spend most of your time gaming, then we suggest you pass on the Zboard, which felt a bit clacky for typing for any length of time.
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| Though it comes with a key set for office work, we don't suggest choosing the clacking Zboard unless you know you'll be using it primarily for gaming. |
Gaming isn't the only activity at which the Gamer Infinity 9900 Pro excels. With 240GB of drive space via two Seagate 120GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration and a fast 8X multiformat NEC DVD+/-RW drive, digital video editors and moviemakers should also check out this system (the drive writes to CD-Rs at a respectable 32X clip, too). While not quite as speedy as 10,000rpm SATA drives, the Seagate units combine for ample storage space and quick load and save times. The second optical drive is a plain-Jane 16X DVD-ROM drive, which duplicates the DVD burner's ability to play DVDs but gives you the added ability to make quick disc-to-disc copies. No matter which drive you choose for playing DVDs, the audio will sound top-notch, thanks to the 125-watt Creative Inspire T7700 7.1 speaker system included with our test system.
The 9900 Pro comes with Windows XP Home and includes a wealth of software, such as Microsoft Works 7.0, Nero OEM Suite, and PowerDVD XP 4.0. You'll get two complete games, too: Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness and Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield. Thankfully, Cyberpower thought to include a Windows XP Home recovery CD, along with every hardware driver CD you might need.
Application performance
Earlier this month, Intel released its next-generation processor, which it developed under the code name Prescott and is rolling out under the Pentium 4 name. To differentiate it from existing P4 processors, Intel has added an E at the end of the processor speed (for example, 3.2EGHz Pentium 4). Built on a 90-nanometer process, Prescott introduces a number of architectural changes compared with the older Pentium 4 design: The L2 cache is doubled from 512K to 1MB, which should offer improved performance even though the clock speed remains 3.2GHz. Offsetting the larger cache is a longer pipeline, which can cause delays but also allows Intel to increase the clock speed to 4GHz; the company has stated that it will do so by the end of the year. In addition, Prescott includes 13 new multimedia instructions, which Intel is calling SSE III.
Considering that the L2 cache was doubled, we expected to at least a small speed increase, but surprisingly, we saw either a very small performance gain or none at all. We expect to see performance gains with Prescott when Intel introduces higher clock speeds and when applications are released that are able to take advantage of the SSE III instructions.
As our test results show, the Cyberpower Gamer Infinity 9900 Pro sits in essentially a dead heat with the other 3.2GHz-rated systems in this review, the Prescott 3.2EGHz-equipped Dell Dimension 8300, and the original 3.2GHz Pentium 4-powered Compaq X09 Gaming PC. This bears out what we know about Prescott: despite its smaller transistor size and larger L2 cache, initially, it won't show a significant performance increase given the longer processing pipeline. We will likely see more benefit from the new design as Intel ramps up the processor speed throughout the year. But despite its fourth-place finish on SysMark 2002, this is by no means a weak system. With an overall score of 334, the Gamer Infinity 9900 Pro sits exactly where it should among a selection of very high-end desktops, and it should be able to handle anything you care to throw at it.
Application performance (Longer bars indicate better performance)
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BAPCo SysMark 2002 rating | |
SysMark 2002 Internet-content-creation rating | |
SysMark 2002 office-productivity rating |
Dell Dimension 8300 (3.2EGHz Intel P4, 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz)
333
462
240
To measure application performance, CNET Labs uses BAPCo's SysMark 2002, an industry-standard benchmark. Using off-the-shelf applications, SysMark measures a desktop's performance using office-productivity applications (such as Microsoft Office and McAfee VirusScan) and Internet-content-creation applications (such as Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Dreamweaver).
3D graphics and gaming performance
Equipped with the 256MB ATI Radeon 9800XT graphics card, the Cyberpower Gamer Infinity 9900 Pro is a very capable gaming system. One of the most advanced graphics cards on the market, the 9800XT is faster and comes with more memory than the 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro that's found in the Dell Dimension 8300. With a score of 59.0fps at a 1,600x1,200 resolution in our Unreal Tournament test, the Extreme Gamer PC is only incrementally faster than the Dell, though it's far behind the Velocity Micro and the Falcon Northwest systems, both of which are equipped with faster CPUs and, in the case of the Velocity Micro, high-performing hard drives. A score of 60fps is largely considered the minimum ideal frame rate for acceptable performance; the iBuyPower comes a hairbreadth from that on one of our most intensive benchmarks, which speaks very well of its performance. You will not be disappointed using this machine as a gaming PC.
3D gaming performance (in fps) (Longer bars indicate better performance)
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Unreal Tournament 2003 Flyby-Antalus 1,024x768 | |
Unreal Tournament 2003 Flyby-Antalus 1,600x1,200 4XAA 8XAF |
Dell Dimension 8300 (ATI Radeon 9800 Pro)
188.4
53.5
Note: * Denotes system was not tested at this resolution.
To measure 3D gaming performance, CNET Labs runs Epic Games' Unreal Tournament 2003, widely used as an industry-standard benchmark. We use Unreal to measure a desktop's performance with the DirectX 8.0 (DX8) interface at a 32-bit color depth at a resolution of 1,024x768. For higher-end systems that support higher resolutions, we run an additional test at 1,600x1,200. Antialiasing and anisotropic filtering are disabled during our 1,024x768 tests and are set to 4X and 8X respectively during our 1,600x1,200 tests. At this color depth and these resolutions, Unreal is an excellent way to compare the performance of low-end to high-end graphics subsystems. We report the results of Unreal's Flyby-Antalus test in frames per second (fps).
Performance analysis written by CNET Labs technician David Gussman.
Find out more about how we test desktop systems.
System configurations:
ABS Ultimate M6
Windows XP Professional; 2.2GHz AMD Athlon 64 FX-51; Nvidia Nforce-3 Pro 150; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; ATI Radeon 9800XT 256MB; two Seagate ST380013AS 80GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA; WinXP Promise FastTrack 376/378 controller
Compaq X09 Gaming PC
Windows XP Professional; 3.2GHz Intel P4; Intel 875P chipset; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; Nvidia GeForce FX 5950 Ultra 256MB; two Seagate ST3120026AS 120GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA; integrated Intel 82801ER SATA RAID controller
Cyberpower Gamer Infinity 9900 Pro
Windows XP Home; 3.2EGHz Intel P4; Intel 875P chipset; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; ATI Radeon 9800XT Ultra 256MB; two Seagate ST3120026AS 120GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA; integrated Intel 82801ER SATA RAID controller
Dell Dimension 8300
Windows XP Home; 3.2EGHz Intel P4; Intel 875P chipset; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB; Maxtor 6Y250M0 250GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA
Falcon Northwest Mach V
Windows XP Home; 3.4GHz Intel P4 Extreme; Intel 875P chipset; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; Nvidia GeForce FX 5950 Ultra 256MB; two Seagate ST3120026AS 120GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA; integrated Intel 82801ER SATA RAID controller
iBuyPower Extreme Gaming PC
Windows XP Home; 3.2EGHz Intel P4; Intel 875P chipset; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; ATI Radeon 9800XT 256MB; Seagate ST3120026AS 120GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA
Cyberpower protects the Gamer Infinity 9900 Pro with a standard warranty covering labor for the lifetime of the system and parts for three years, including one year of onsite service. For an extra $80, you can increase the onsite service to three years--an excellent value for onsite service. Free, lifetime, toll-free tech support is available 24/7. In the event that a unit must be returned for service, owners pay to ship the unit to Cyberpower's warehouse for repair, and Cyberpower pays the return shipping.
The Gamer Infinity 9900 Pro ships with a binder that holds setup instructions and a complete set of device manuals and CDs, which conveniently keeps all of the system's media in one place. If you need additional support, Cyberpower's Web site offers a suite of driver downloads, though it lacks the FAQs, the knowledge base, the online documentation, and other support content often found from larger manufacturers.
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