CyberPower Gamer Ultra 650 review

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Verdict:

It's rare to find such a powerful graphics card in a £600 PC, so if you're intending to play games this PC is ideal. You'll need a more suitable mouse for gaming, but this is a good place for the new gamer to start.

Review Date: 5 Dec 2007

Price when reviewed: £600

Supplier: http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk

Reviewed By: Matt Smith

Our Rating 5 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

CyberPower's Gamer Ultra 650 is incredibly quick for games, but its Windows performance is less impressive.

Features

PCs aimed at gamers often have a space-age look, and the Gamer Ultra 650 is no exception. The attractive case hides the front two USB2 ports, DVD writer and on switch behind a black door. This is the quietest PC in the group.

The 250GB hard disk should give enough storage for most users. There's no memory card reader, but if you want to fit one or add a second hard disk, there's lots of room inside. The expansion bays have clips rather than screws, so installing extra drives is very simple.

The 19in widescreen display has a native resolution of 1,440x900 and is evenly lit, with crisp colours. It's great for games and Windows Vista alike. The Logitech 2.1 speakers do a great job and don't require miles of cables and complex positioning. They are better than many more expensive speakers we've reviewed.

The Logitech keyboard and mouse are good for this price, but they're basic. The keyboard's not that comfortable to type on for long periods.

Performance

The 320MB EVGA 8800 GTS graphics card is the fastest here. Its score of 54.3fps in our Call of Duty 2 test shows it can cope with modern games at high detail settings. CyberPower has fitted the Black Edition of AMD's Athlon 64 X2 5000+, which can be overclocked by increasing the processor's multiplier setting. Even running at 3.1GHz, however, this PC couldn't compete with the Intel-based PCs and scored the second-lowest overall score in our 2D tests.

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