CyberPower Gamer Infinity XT Ultimate DDR3 review

Processors often get all the attention, but other components of your PC, such as memory, can also significantly affect your computer's performance.

CyberPower's Gamer Infinity XT Ultimate DDR3 is the first PC we've seen to use DDR3 memory, the speedier successor to the DDR2 RAM used in most PCs. The Ultimate is certainly one of the fastest PCs we've seen, but this performance comes at a high price.

The Ultimate's 2GB of DDR3 memory is accompanied by a Core 2 Duo E6750 processor, which is overclocked to 3.2GHz. Unsurprisingly, the Ultimate's managed excellent scores in our Windows performance tests. It did particularly well in our video-encoding test, with a score of 350. Only computers with quad-core processors are faster. The Ultimate will be able to handle demanding computing tasks for some time to come.

Gamers will also be pleased by the Ultimate's performance. The Ultimate is the first PC we've seen equipped with the 1GB version of ATI's Radeon HD2900XT graphics card. It managed impressively smooth frame rates in both our Call of Duty 2 and Prey tests, but currently provides little speed boost over the cheaper 512MB version of the card.

Since the Ultimate supports CrossFire, you could add another ATI graphics card to boost 3D performance even further. Unfortunately, a double-slot card, such as another HD2900XT, won't fit unless you remove the Creative X-Fi sound card. This is a shame, as the X-Fi provides more realistic sound effects in games that support EAX processing, such as Doom 3. The included Creative 5.1 speakers are good enough for games and movies, but music fans will want a better-quality set, as the Inspire T6100 set sounds muffled and woolly.

The 22in ViewSonic VX2235M monitor has an anti-glare instead of a glossy finish. This reduces distracting reflections from sources such as sunlight and overhead lighting. Colours looked bright and evenly lit, but there was some banding in our colour transition test and some speckling in our greyscale gradient test, plus white areas looked greyish. It isn't a terrible monitor, but we'd expect better for this price.

Despite all the advanced technology inside its large and imposing case, the Ultimate is surprisingly quiet. It isn't the quietest we've tested, but it is unobtrusive when stowed under a desk. If the RAID 0 (striped) array of two 250GB hard disks isn't spacious enough for you, another four disks can be added via the slide-out hard disk trays. Besides the PCI slot squeezed up against the large graphics card, there are two PCI Express x1 slots for adding expansion cards. You're unlikely to need them, as the Ultimate has wireless networking, eSATA and FireWire 400 built in.

We were impressed by the Ultimate's performance, but the peripherals are disappointing given that this is one of the most expensive PCs we've seen recently. It costs £250 more than PC Specialist's similarly specified Apollo 850GTS (What's New, Shopper November 2007) and £600 more than CyberPower's own Gamer Infinity Silent (What's New, Shopper December 2007). While neither is as fast as the Ultimate, both come close. Unless you regularly use your PC for demanding tasks, the Ultimate really isn't particularly good value.