Desktops: Penryn PC Takes Power Prize

The first desktop we've tested with Intel's new Penryn CPU tops our chart.

HP's pavilion slimline s3200t (left) and CyberPower's hulking Power Infinity Pro.The first   computer we've tested that features Intel's new high-end Penryn processor and a well-designed small-form-factor PC from HP are the highlights of this month's batch of power systems.

CyberPower's Power Infinity Pro, which leads our Top 5 Power Desktops chart, is equipped with Intel's recently released 3-GHz QX9650 Core 2 Extreme CPU, code-named Penryn. Unlike existing Core 2 chips that the company produces using a 65-nanometer manufacturing process, Penryn CPUs such as the QX9650 are fabricated in a 45nm process that packs more transistors--in effect, more processing power--into the same amount of space on a chip.

We pitted the Power Infinity Pro against power desktops that use Intel's previous high-end CPU, the 3-GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6850: HP's Blackbird 002 LCi, the third-ranked CyberPower Infinity Pro, Polywell's P3503-3DT, and War Machine's M1 Elite. Running our WorldBench 6 Beta 2 and graphics tests, we compared the Power Infinity Pro's scores against the scores that these other systems earned in imaging, 3D rendering, video encoding, and gaming.

The results showed an average performance gain of just 8.5 percent in imaging, 12.5 percent in 3D rendering, 8.5 percent in video encoding, and 12.5 percent in gaming. Granted, those aren't quitethe percentages that Intel claims, but they still show a definite performance boost.

One possible explanation for these results is that the applications in our WorldBench test suite are not yet optimized to take advantage of Penryn's new instruction set, called Streaming Single Instruction, Multiple Data Extensions 4 (SSE4), which can greatly speed up tasks such as some key operations in video encoding in an SSE4-enabled app. (Intel's in-house benchmarks, and the demonstrations that we saw at last fall's Intel Developer Forum, back up those claims for SSE4.)

Power Without Penryn

As our chart indicates, you don't need a quad-core Penryn PC to obtain a desktop system capable of stellar performance (click on the icon at the bottom of this page or visit thecurrent Top 5 Power PCs). The Xi MTower PCIe's high scores for its overall performance and design, combined with a reasonable price, helped it reach second place. Using a 3-GHz Core 2 Duo E6850 (a dual-core CPU with a smaller L2 memory cache and a lower price than quad-core, QX-series chips), the Xi MTower PCIe earned a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 mark of 121.

That score is one point better than the QX9650-based Power Infinity Pro's WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 120--a difference due to the latter PC's inexplicably lackluster results in our Nero image-burning and WinZip tests. But thanks to its sterling graphics performance, the Power Infinity Pro did well enough overall to become our Best Buy.

The older, QX6850-based CyberPower Infinity Pro's WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 124 remains the highest we've seen to date; this result and its excellent graphics scores helped it to third place on our chart. However, its very steep price--it costs even more than the newer Power Infinity Pro--kept it from ranking higher.

Three new QX6850-based systems--the HP Blackbird 002 LCi, the Polywell Poly P3503-3DT, and the War Machine M1 Elite--have solid credentials as worthwhile power PCs, but they didn't make the chart.

The superbly designed Blackbird 002 LCi is a creation of boutique gaming-PC maker VoodooPC, which HP acquired in 2006. Its WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 123 was second-fastest in this group, but our test model missed the Top 5 because of its premium $5900 price. (See our video and full review of the system.)

The Poly P3503-3DT earned high marks in our graphics tests, but its mundane design and steep price offset its benefits enough to keep it from ranking.