CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 06/20/2005
- Updated on: 01/13/2010
- Released on: 04/01/2005
The Cyberpower Gamer Infinity 9900 Pro's Asus P5AD2-E Premium motherboard is an overclocker's dream come true. The BIOS lets you manipulate various CPU and video-card settings, such as the frontside bus speed and the CPU clock multiplier. (Asus claims that CPUs with clocked multipliers, like the Pentium 4, aren't an obstacle.) Should you push the PC too far, Asus's Proactive AI feature will automatically revert to the system's default settings on the next reboot. An external blue-fluorescent display on the front panel shows the temperatures of the hard drives and the CPU, also aiding the overclocker's cause. Also appreciated: the built-in 802.11g access point, which can connect to an existing wireless network or become the hub for one you want to create.
This is not to say that you need to get involved with tweaking this system to get the most out of it. The Cyberpower Gamer Infinity 9900 Pro achieved appropriately high scores on our benchmark tests, even slightly edging out the PC Club Enpower Edge and its higher-end 3.8GHz Pentium 4 570 CPU on our SysMark 2004 application test. Gaming performance was a little less dominant, although the 9900 Pro's 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra graphics card is certainly no slouch. Scores on our 1,024x768-resolution Half-Life 2 test were more than adequate and in line with where the system should be on the performance scale. Higher resolutions get challenging for this and all other PCs on Half-Life 2, but the good news is that on the 1,600x1,200 Half-Life 2 benchmark, Cyberpower beat even the ZT Group Pro Gaming X6647 and its ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, a 3D card that usually kicks Nvidia's butt (SLI rigs notwithstanding). As its name implies, if you buy this PC for gaming, you're set.
Aiding our test system's performance is a pair of fast hard drives. The two 74GB, 10,000rpm Western Digital Raptor hard drives (in a RAID 0 configuration) give you a decent amount of fast access storage, although we'd recommend that digital media aficionados add a 160GB or larger tertiary drive for extra space. (Unfortunately, you can configure the 9900 Pro with only two drives on Cyberpower's online configurator.) You have the room to add more hard drives yourself, however; the extant drives occupy only two of the five internal 3.5-inch drive bays.
The roomy case also features five 5.25-inch bays, of which only two are occupied by a pair of Sony optical drives: a 16X DVD-ROM drive and an 8X double-layer DVD burner. Expanding the memory is the only potential problem area. Two open sockets wait next to the resident pair of 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM modules, but the radiator for the liquid-cooling system is mounted directly above them, essentially rendering the slots inaccessible, unless you undertake the cumbersome task of taking the radiator out. You also get two vacant PCI slots for card expansion, a respectable number.
Externally, the Cyberpower Gamer Infinity 9900 Pro gives you a fair amount of add-on flexibility. On the back, there are four USB 2.0 ports, a single FireWire jack, and the requisite array of 7.1-supporting audio jacks. Two additional USB 2.0 ports reside on the front, along with another FireWire input. The 6-in-1 media-card reader rounds out the front panel, with enough variation in media types to accommodate most removable flash storage formats. Continue reading
Most helpful user reviews
- Average user rating: 0 stars Not yet available
Back to product review - My rating: 0 stars Write review
-
Showing 1 of 1 user review
- See 1 user review Write review
Submit your review
