Card games
ABS's tool-free server case for the Conquest also has its problems. A four-port USB 2.0 card and a 10/100 Ethernet NIC occupy two of the five PCI slots. The graphics card's heat sink blocks access to the slot next door, leaving only a single free slot, which you'd probably want to fill with the missing FireWire port. At least there's a lot of room for adding storage and other devices, with three more 3.5-inch drives (one front-accessible) and two front-accessible 5.25-inch drives.
ABS's service and support policies, like the system they cover, are merely adequate. Documentation consists of a generic quick-setup poster and a color-coded binder holding general system and component documentation and supplemental software discs. You get a three-year parts and a lifetime labor warranty, with lifetime access to toll-free tech support--but not on weekends. Getting 24/7 support runs an extra $29, and we recommend opting for it if you're a weekend warrior. In any case, the Web site won't help; when we tried it, the driver-downloads database seemed pretty skimpy, and the knowledge base was still "coming soon."
As a dual-CPU system, the Conquest MP starts out with a small, specialized audience. If you're part of that crowd, $2,338 is a reasonable price to pay for such a system. But you're probably better off paying a little more for a PC that can support growth into a workstation or for a single-CPU system with better consumer amenities.
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Performance test 100=performance of a test machine with a PIII-800 processor, an Intel 815EEA motherboard chipset, 128MB of 133MHz SDRAM, a GeForce2 with 32MB DDR, ATA/100 hard drive, Windows 2000 with Service Pack 1, and Windows' display properties set to 1,024x768 and 16-bit color at 75Hz Longer bars indicate better performance
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MadOnion's 3DMark2001 Pro test Measured in frames per second (longer bars indicate better performance)
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SPECviewperf 6.1.2 tests Measured in frames per second (longer bars indicate better performance)
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ABS Conquest MP Windows XP Pro; 2x Athlon XP MP 2000+ 1.67GHz; 512MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz; 128MB GeForce4 Ti 4600; Western Digital WD1000JB 100GB 7,200rpm Alienware Aurora DDR Windows XP Home; Athlon XP 2000+ 1.67GHz; 512MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz; 128MB GeForce4 Ti 4600; Western Digital WD1000BB 100GB 7,200rpm Dell Dimension 8100 reference system Windows XP Home; Pentium 4 1.7GHz; 256MB RDRAM 800MHz; 64MB Nvidia GeForce2 Ultra; Maxtor 5T060H6 60GB 7,200rpm ElementPC Radium MP Windows XP Home; 2x Athlon XP MP 1900+ 1.68GHz; 1GB DDR SDRAM 280MHz; 64MB ATI Radeon 8500; Maxtor 6L060J3 60GB 7,200rpm and Western Digital WD1000JB 100GB 7,200rpm NexGenMicro AMD XP Dragon Windows XP Pro; Athlon XP 2000+ 1.67GHz; 128MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz; 128MB GeForce4 Ti 4600; 2x Western Digital WD1200JB 120GB 7,200rpm As we expected, the second CPU did nothing for the Conquest MP in application performance tests, where it posted a slightly lower overall SysMark2002 score than did the Alienware Aurora DDR. And in our MadOnion 3Dmark 2001 Pro test, the Conquest MP was about 10 percent slower than the Alienware. The results are equally vague on SPECviewperf 6.1.2 tests, which measure OpenGL graphics performance. The Conquest MP generally outperforms the ElementPC Radium's ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500DV except on wireframe-intensive viewsets such as DX-06 and AWadvs-04, where ATI cards traditionally excel. |
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