MaximumPC 2004 12

Reviews

ZT Group Pro Gaming PC

Intel’s exciting new 1066MHz FSB Pentium 4 Extreme Edition

gets dissed by a slow-ass ATI X600 card

P

eanut butter and chocolate we

get. Hell, we even understand the

Captain and Tennille. But we’ll

never, ever understand the odd pairing

of a fast CPU with a slow videocard.

This is the type of configuration

ZT Group, a PC builder

located in New Jersey,

chose for the company’s

first submission to

Maximum PC. While

the rig packs Intel’s

latest and greatest

CPU—the 3.47GHz

Pentium 4 Extreme

Edition operating

on the chipmaker’s

exciting new 1066MHz

frontside bus, the pres-

ence of ATI’s X600 Pro

card brings it down.

Way down. The X600

features a four-pipe

graphics chip that

uses straight 128-

bit DDR instead

of G-DDR3 or

DDR2. In its low-

end class, it’s a

decent performer,

but pairing it

with Intel’s

fastest CPU in a

machine called

“Pro Gaming PC”

is senseless.

The PCI

Express graphics

card and new

CPU are fitted

into an Intel

D925XECV2

motherboard that

uses the new Intel

925XE chipset.

Intel chipset buffs

will recognize the

“E” designator,

which indicates

faster bus speeds

and more features

than the standard

chipset, as with the 845E and the

850E. In this case, the 925XE chipset

takes the frontside bus from 800MHz

to 1066MHz. In addition to the x16

PCI-E slot, the board features four PCI

slots and two x1 PCI-E slots, all six of

which are wide open for expansion

as ZT Group opted to use the board’s

onboard HD audio instead of the stan-

dard Sound Blaster card.

Storage duties are handled by a

single 160GB Seagate 7200.7 SATA

drive, which feels wimpy in this age of

300GB hard drives. A pair of LG drives

takes care of optical chores; one of the

drives is able to write to both plus and

dash formats as well as the long-dead

RAM format. Pardon us for sounding

ungrateful, but we’ll take double-layer

over RAM any day of the week.

Everything is wrapped in a Cooler

Master Cavalier enclosure with a front-

mounted sound meter and clear case

window. We typically appreciate the

aesthetic of a case window, but not

in this situation. In our opinion, a PC

with a case window should not only

showcase superior parts, but also a

super-clean wiring job. The ZT Group’s

wiring methodology is akin to the

technique we used to clean

our rooms when we were seven years

old: Throw everything into the closet

and push on the door until it shuts.

Every wire in our test rig was simply—

and messily—bundled together and

then tightly zip-tied. So tight, in fact,

that the pass-through bracket for the

case’s sound meter ripped off

during shipping.

Performance-wise, the Pro Gaming

PC did a good job on benchmarks that

circumvent videocard utilization. In

Premiere Pro , the PGP was just a tick

off the very fast Velocity Pro Magix

box we reviewed last June. It also

measured just ahead of the Velocity

Pro Magix in Photoshop and tied that

rig in our MusicMatch tests. In SYSmark

2004 though, the Pro Gaming PC fell

behind by almost 10 percent. That’s

likely due to the absence of RAID and

the higher latency of the DDR2 RAM.

The saddest fact, however, is that our

almost year-old zero point system

smoked the Gaming PC in Halo and

Jedi Academy.

Tsk, tsk. That’s just not right—espe-

cially in a machine dubbed the Pro

Gaming PC.

— GORDON MAH UNG

 MA XIMUMPC DECEMBER 2004

UNDER THE HOOD

DISPLAY

Videocard ATI Radeon X600 Pro 128MB

(398MHz core, 337MHz DDR)

STORAGE

Hard drive Seagate 7200.7 160GB

Optical LG GSA-4120B (8x DVD+/- R, 4x

DVD+/-RW, 3x DVD-RAM, 24x

CD-R)

LG GDR-8162B

BUNDLE

Windows XP Pro, CyberLink PowerDVD, Ahead

Nero Express

THE BRAINS

CPU Intel 3.47GHz Pentium 4 Extreme

Edition

Mobo Intel D925XECV2 using Intel

925XE chipset

RAM 1GB Registered DDR2 533

Crucial Technology (two 512MB)

I/O ports Six High-Speed USB 2.0,

one serial, one parallel, one

FireWire, optical SPDIF

LAN Integrated Gigabit (Marvell phy)

AUDIO

Soundcard Onboard HD Audio

Case Cooler Master Cavalier

Fans/extras One 120mm, one 80mm, cold

cathode, media reader

Mouse Logitech Wheel Mouse

Keyboard Logitech Internet Keyboard

FINE DETAILS

BOOT: 37 sec. DOWN: 30 sec.

Reasonably priced.

SPEED LOADERS

HALF MOON CLIPS

Funky, slow X600 graphics card and tangled

wiring job.

$2,350, http://www.ztgroup.com

MA XIMUMPCVERDICT 5

“Pro Gaming PC” is a misnomer. When you combine

a fast frontside bus and a slow videocard, bad

things happen. And look at that wiring job!

0 20% 40% 60% 80%

PERCENT FASTER

ZERO POINT

SCORES

SYSmark2004

Premiere Pro

Photoshop 7.0

MusicMatch 8.1

Jedi Academy

Halo

172

720 sec

289 sec

281 sec

54.4 fps

38.8 fps

100%

202

505 sec

260 sec

222 sec

31.5 fps

19.59 fps

ZT GROUP PO GAMING PC SCORES

Our zero-point system includes: a 2.2GHz Athlon 64 FX-51, an Asus SK8N mother-

board, 1GB of Corsair Registered TwinX DDR400 RAM, an ATI Radeon 9800 XT, a

250GB Western Digital WD2500JB hard drive, Plextor PX-708A DVD burner and a PC

Power and Cooling TurboCool 510 Deluxe power supply.