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CNET editors' rating:
3.5 stars
Very good
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Product summary
The good: Strong application and graphics performance; excellent peripherals; exemplary warranty.
The bad: Unacceptable USB cabling; no application suite included in price.
The bottom line: Aside from its unattractive cabling design, the otherwise superb ABS Ultimate M4 will have gamers and graphics gurus drooling.
Specifications: Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2700+ (2.17 GHz); RAM installed: 1 GB; Hard drive: 120 GB; See full specs
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 01/15/2003
- Updated on: 01/21/2003
- Released on: 01/13/2003
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 The Ultimate M4 has nothing to hide. |
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Granted, our evaluation system featured two hard drives in a RAID array and dual optical drives, plus a floppy, but we were still surprised at how many cables run through the case. We were even more stunned to find that some were actually sticking out of the case through one of the expansion slots on the back panel.
This Kingwin case features four front-mounted USB 2.0 ports, two audio jacks, and a single FireWire connector. It turns out that of these connections up front, only two of the USB ports are connected directly to the motherboard. The rest are powered from their corresponding ports on the back panel. Five cables stick out of an expansion slot on the back: two USB cables are routed up to their corresponding ports above, and three more cables are attached to the sound card's FireWire and audio ports. These cables then snake through the interior to power the ports on the front panel. In addition to cluttering the case, this workaround results in only six of the eight USB ports working simultaneously. The fault lies with the case design, and ABS does as good a job as it can in keeping them out of your way by routing them along the bottom of the case.
 Four USB 2.0 ports, two audio jacks, and a FireWire connection. But at what cost? |
 Not the most elegant solution for front-mounted ports. |
We applaud ABS for outfitting the Ultimate with a massive 550-watt power supply and seven case fans. Of the external drive bays, four remain free, despite the three drives installed there, with three free 3.5-inch bays on the inside. The high-end KT4 Ultra motherboard features six PCI slots, of which three are available, although only one enjoys unfettered external access because of the aforementioned cabling.
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 DVD-ROM drive and speedy CD-RW drive. |
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The Ultimate M4's storage options are equally impressive. Our test system arrived with an expansive RAID array configured with two fast 120GB hard drives from Western Digital. A standard floppy, 16X DVD-ROM drive, and fast Plextor 48X/24X/48X CD-RW drive rounded out the media options.
The system's massive 22-inch NEC MultiSync FE2111SB looked crystal-clear and extremely bright in our tests, especially during DVD playback. With the amazing Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 speaker system, games and movies rumble with earthshaking bass frequencies. These best-of-breed peripherals make this system a cut above the similarly configured Polywell Poly 884RF-2700.
 Two hard drives combine for a whopping 240GB of storage space. |
 A sight for sore eyes: NEC's gorgeous 22-inch CRT. |
Our system came with no productivity software preloaded; however, Microsoft Office XP Pro and Small Business Edition are upgrade options. A handful of utilities, including Norton AntiVirus 2002 and Creative PlayCenter audio software, were the only software complements to Windows XP Home on our test system.
Application performance
The version of the Ultimate M4 that we tested included an AMD Athlon XP 2700+ processor, 1GB of DDR SDRAM running at 400MHz, an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro graphics card, and dual 7,200rpm Western Digital hard drives configured for RAID 0 level disk striping. Not surprisingly, decked out with such impressive components, the Ultimate M4 turned out to be the speediest Athlon XP 2700+-based desktop we've tested up to this point. Compared with systems using CPUs from that other processor manufacturer, the Ultimate M4's overall application performance is similar to what we've seen with 2.4GHz-based Intel P4 systems. With content-creation applications, the Ultimate M4's performance falls between that of 2GHz- and 2.26GHz-based P4 desktops. Only with office-productivity apps, however, does the Ultimate M4 deliver performance that's comparable to that of a 2.8GHz P4-based system.
Application Performance (Longer bars indicate better performance)
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To measure application performance, CNET Labs uses BAPCo's SysMark2002, an industry-standard benchmark. Using off-the-shelf applications, SysMark measures a desktop's performance using office-productivity applications (such as Microsoft Office and McAfee VirusScan) and Internet-content-creation applications (such as Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Dreamweaver).
3D Graphics and gaming performance
It's a good thing that a desktop that's marketed as a gaming system comes with one of the hottest graphics cards available today: the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. Taking advantage of the latest technologies, the ATI card and the motherboard's Via KT400 chipset both support AGP 8X. Whether you'll actually find any 3D applications demanding enough to utilize that extra bandwidth remains to be seen, but the Ultimate M4 produces some of the speediest 3D graphics to come through CNET Labs.
3D graphics performance (Longer bars indicate better performance)
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To measure 3D graphics performance, CNET Labs uses Futuremark's 3DMark 2001 Pro Second Edition, Build 330. We use 3DMark to measure a desktop's performance with the DirectX 8 (DX8) interface at both 16- and 32-bit color settings at a resolution of 1,024x768. A system that does not have DX8 hardware support will typically generate a lower score than one that has DX8 hardware support.
3D gaming performance (in fps) (Longer bars indicate better performance)
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To measure 3D gaming performance, CNET Labs uses Quake III Arena. Although Quake III is an older game, it is still widely used as an industry-standard tool. Quake III does not require DX8 hardware support--as 3DMark2001 does--and is therefore an excellent means of comparing the performance of low- to high-end graphics subsystems. Quake III performance is reported in frames per second (fps).
System configurations:
ABS Ultimate M4
Windows XP Home; 2.17GHz AMD Athlon XP 2700+; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB; two Western Digital WD1200JB-75CRA0 120GB 7,200rpm; Highpoint HPT372A UDMA/ATA133 RAID
Dell Dimension 4550
Windows XP Home; 2.66GHz Intel P4; 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; Nvidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 64MB; Western Digital WD120JB-75CRA0 120GB 7,200rpm
Gateway Profile 4X
Windows XP Home; 2.4GHz Intel P4; 512MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz; Nvidia GeForce2 MX 400 32MB; Western Digital WD120BB-53CAA1 120GB 7,200rpm
iBuyPower Gamer Force-2
Windows XP Home; 2.17GHz AMD Athlon XP 2700+; 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; Nvidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 128MB; Western Digital WD800BB-00CAA1 80GB 7,200rpm
Polywell Poly 884RF-2700
Windows XP Professional; 2.17GHz AMD Athlon XP 2700+; 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB; two Western Digital WD800JB-00CRA1 80GB 7,200rpm; integrated Promise FastTrack133 Lite RAID
Find out more about how we test desktop systems.ABS backs the Ultimate with a terrific warranty that covers parts for three years and labor for the life of the system, along with lifetime tech support and one year of onsite service. Telephone support is available weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. PT. In the event that you must ship something back to ABS for repair, you pay for shipping one way.
Although ABS does not provide a system manual specific to this system (or the Ultimate line), all printed documentation is clearly organized in a three-ring binder. This neatly keeps the motherboard and graphics card manuals, recovery discs, and software CDs in one place.
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