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Gaming Scores With 3DMark 2001 and Quake 3 |
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You Can't Work
ALL The Time! |
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The way
the SS51G is designed, this is probably the first of
the barebones systems that can offer high-end gaming
performance with an add on graphics card. So we
ran a couple of the more popular and trusted
benchmarks to show what this system is capable of when
properly equipped.
When it
comes to the onboard graphics, the SS51G was
functional at running DirectX8 games, but we were
limited to 1024x768. Once we increased the
resolution to 1280x1024, the benchmark wouldn't
complete, pushing the onboard graphics beyond its
ability. Once we installed the Ti4600, however,
the SS51G turned out an excellent score at both
resolutions. But
what about OpenGL?
First, we ran Quake 3 Timedemo "Demo001" at 640x480x16 to determine the CPU
limit of the system. With the onboard graphics
enabled, the system posted a fair score of over
117FPS. With the Ti4600 in place, the SS51G more
than doubled its output, reaching its limit just shy
of 280FPS.
Next we'll increase the
graphics quality to 1024x768x32 with all visual
qualities set to maximum.
At the higher quality, the
onboard graphics were not up to the task, barely
breaking the 40FPS mark. With the Ti4600, the
system averaged 235FPS, almost six times the rate of the
onboard chip. With the
proper video card installed, the SS51G is an excellent
machine for gaming, showing us scores we're used to
seeing on high-end, full-sized systems.
Next up we'll put the
SS51G to work with Business & Content Creation
Winstone.
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Meet the Winstones |
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Stop Playing
Around & Get to Work! |
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Business Winstone 2001 and Content
Creation 2002
measure a PC's overall performance by running a series
of of popular applications. Business Winstones
focuses on workstation performance while Content
Creation is oriented toward the more taxing multimedia
programs. Below is a brief run-down of the
applications each Winstone test uses to generate its
rating.
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The Business Winstone 2001 tests include:
Five Microsoft Office 2000 applications
(Access, Excel, FrontPage, PowerPoint, and
Word)
Microsoft Project 98
Lotus Notes R5
NicoMak WinZip
Norton Antivirus
Netscape Communicator
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The Content Creation Winstone 2002 tests
include:
Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1
Adobe Premiere 6.0
Macromedia Director 8.5
Macromedia Dreamweaver UltraDev 4
Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 7
Netscape Navigator 6/6.01
Sonic Foundry Sound Forge 5.0c (build 184) |
It seems that even the two
workhorse benchmarking applications stood to gain from
a Ti4600 being installed. This is not because of
the ability of the video card, but more so from the
increase of system memory bandwidth. Both scores saw
fair gains with an add-on graphics card in place, with
Business Winstone showing an increase of 4% and
Content Creation averaging 7.5%.
Although
we've been fond of each of the previously released
mini PCs from Shuttle, the SS51G is the first to
really blow us away. Shuttle has managed to
create a quality barebones system that is no larger in size
than a shoe box, yet has the performance to rival
full-size high performance computers when properly
equipped. The SS51G
even offers more standard features than systems twice
its size, leaving us with little to desire other than
room for a second hard drive and support for RAID.
Then again, we wouldn't be surprised if Shuttle was
working on that as we speak.
With so
much condensed into such a small space, the SS51G
truly has the potential to fit into a wide range of
computing needs. Out of the box, the unit would
make a powerful workstation, server, or multimedia
system. Add on a high quality video card and the
SS51G has the makings for an awesome gaming machine
that would be light enough to bring to LAN parties
with ease. At the time of this review, we found
the SS51G selling for $329 on Newegg.com, a mere $12
more than the SS40G we reviewed last week! That
extra $12 gets you a system with support for ATA133,
PC2700 DDR and USB 2.0 plus the addition of an AGP
slot. As far as this reviewer is concerned, the
choice is a no brainer. The SS51G is clearly the
most powerful and valuable XPC mini system.
Before we
issue a rating, we should stress one more thing.
With the SS51G performing so poorly in our
overclocking tests, some of you may feel our rating is
too high. When we assess a system's
overclockability, just like the overclock itself, it
is icing on the cake-a bonus. While we do take
these results into consideration when issuing a rating, we feel
the SS51G
excelled beyond expectations in every other facet of
this review and we've issued our score based on that
fact.
Based on its
novel design, excellent performance, and complete
feature set, we give the Shuttle SS51G XPC mini
barebones system a HotHardware Heat Meter rating of 9 and the coveted Hot Hardware Editor's Choice Award for
being an all out kick ass product!
Discuss this or any
other Hot Hardware Review in the PC Hardware Forum!
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