reviews TESTED. REVIEWED. VERDICTIZED
J
anuary 2004. DirectX 9 had just
shipped. SCO had begun its ulti-
mately futile crusade against IBM. And
Hypersonic’s brightly colored Sonic Boom,
featuring Intel’s newest processor, was
smacking our benchmarks around.
Sure, back in 2004 the new hotness was
Intel’s Pentium 4 Extreme Edition and the
Sonic Boom’s paint job was bright yellow,
but the cherry-red Hypersonic Sonic Boom
OXC—the fi rst rig we’ve tested using Intel’s
fabled Penryn CPU—still gives us an undeni-
able sense of déjà vu.
This Sonic Boom’s got a sweet 3GHz
Core 2 Extreme QX9650 CPU overclocked
to 3.88GHz on a 1.7GHz FSB. Throw in
a pair of XFX GeForce 8800 Ultras and
4GB of OCZ Reaper DDR2 at 1,208MHz,
all sitting pretty on Nvidia’s new 780i SLI
motherboard, and you’ve got a system as
hot—in theory—as the Sonic Boom we
awarded a 9 Kick Ass verdict to four years
ago. Unfortunately, we don’t traffi c in theory.
Despite hot parts, a fab paint job, and wick-
ed technology, the Sonic Boom went bust
during our stability testing.
It’s a shame because one of the neatest
things about this Hypersonic system is its
use of Nvidia’s new open Enthusiast System
Architecture (ESA), which enables unprec-
edented monitoring of system temperatures,
voltages, and stats via the Nvidia Monitorapp. The 1,200-watt PC
Power and Cooling Turbo
Cool power supply is
ESA-compliant, as is the
custom CoolIt CPU/GPU
cooler. You can read more
about the ESA on page 60,
but let’s just say we like it.
Before we get to the
nitty-gritty of benchmark-
ing, let’s marvel for a
minute at Hypersonic’s
fully kitted fl ight simulator rig.
The Lian-Li PC-A10 chassis is beautifully
decked out with a cherry-red Colorware
paint job, and looks sleek but still classy,
especially compared to the over-the-top
cases we’ve seen recently from HP, Dell,
and AVADirect.
Hypersonic doesn’t mess around when it
comes to crafting a fl ight-sim deck. Instead
of one measly monitor, we got three 19-inch
LG L1933 Flatron displays hooked up to a
Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital Edition, which
runs the three digital monitors from one DVI
port for a combined 3840x1024 resolution.
You’ll fi nd our impressions of the fl ight-sim
aspects of this setup, which also include a
Saitek Pro Flight yoke, rudder pedals, and
throttle, in this month’s In the Lab (page 60).
But what if fl ight simulation’s not your
thing? What if you’re only interested in the
rig itself and not the optional fl ight-sim
package and all its accoutrements? It is for
you, Earth-bound reader, that we ended our
dreamy sky tours and commenced our stan-
dard Vista benchmark suite.Hypersonic Sonic
Boom OCX
Little red Corvette, baby you’re much too fast
Understated elegance: A killer paint job makes for a
classy chassis.CPU Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650
(3.0GHz overclocked to 3.88GHz)
MOBO Nvidia 780i SLI
RAM 4GB OCZ Reaper DDR2/1208
LAN Gigabit LAN x2
HARD Two 150GB Raptors (10,000rpm
DRIVES SATA) in RAID 0; 1 1TB Hitachi
DeskStar backup drive
OPTICAL Plextor PX-810SAUNDER THE HOOD
VIDEOCARD Two 768MB XFX GeForce 8800
Ultras in SLI
SOUNDCARD Realtek HD (onboard)
CASE Lian-Li PC-A10
BOOT: 52 sec. DOWN: 31 sec.BRAINSBEAUTY68 MAXIMUMPC | FEB 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
1,080 secZERO POINT SCORES0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%102 sec
1,087 sec
1,451 (-.2%) sec169 fps 239 fpsOur current desktop test bed consists of a quad-core 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700, 2GB of Corsair DDR2/800 RAM on an EVGA 680 SLI motherboard. We are running two
EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX cards in SLI mode, Western Digital 150GB Raptor and 500GB Caviar hard drives, an LG GGC-H20L optical drive, a Sound Blaster X-Fi soundcard, and PC
Power and Cooling Silencer 750 Quad power supply. The OS is Windows Vista Ultimate.VISTA BENCHMARKS
PREMIERE PRO CS3
PHOTOSHOP CS3
PROSHOW
MAINCONCEPT
FEAR 1.07
QUAKE 41,310 sec
152 sec
1,506 sec
1,448 sec
137 fps
135 fpsThis duct hides an additional radiator next
to the power supply.