Hi-Grade DMS Extreme Xtc2_02 review

Hi-Grade Xtc2_02 Review

Reviewed by: Rory Reid

Reviewed on: 6 February 2007

The graphics card, an ATI Radeon X1600, is a capable mid-range card that'll run most games, but it also uses a noisy fan, which is particularly noticeable when running 3D games. The combined noise of the CPU and graphics card can't be described as earth-shattering, but it's certainly audible and contradicts Hi-Grade's claims that the PC is 'silent'.

Luckily, that's about all the bad news. The rest of the PC is stuffed with components that cement its status as an outstanding Media Center PC. Most notable is the inclusion of a Sony BDRW BWU-100A Blu-ray drive. This lets you play Blu-ray movies and burn discs with up to 50GB capacity. It's 'only' a 2x drive (4x drives are available) but it's not exactly decrepit -- it'll play and record DVD content as well. Unfortunately, you can't play Blu-ray movies inside the Media Center interface -- you'll need to fire up the accompanying Cyberlink BD Solution software instead.
 

The Blu-ray drive hides discreetly behind a flap

 
If the idea of spending £10 on a blank Blu-ray disc isn't your idea of money well spent, you'll be pleased to hear the DMS Xtc2_02 comes with tonnes of hard disk space. It has twin 500GB drives, giving you of 1TB of room. That's enough space to install over 260,000 MP3s, 1,500 DivX movies, over 1.5 million pictures, or 44 million word-only documents.

If you fancy using up some of that space, you'll want to turn your attention to the bundled TV tuner card. It's a dual-tuner Black Gold model, which lets you record one channel while you watch another. This is a hybrid analogue and digital model, so if Freeview reception in your area is poor, you have the analogue tuner to fall back on.

Surround sound comes courtesy of the Intel 945GT chipset. At the rear are audio jacks for mic-in, speaker-out, line-in, rear surround, side surround, centre and subwoofer, along with a coaxial digital out.

You also get a wireless keyboard with a built-in mouse trackball and an infrared remote control and its accompanying IR dongle, so you can control everything from your armchair.

Performance
The DMS Xtc2_02's dual-core CPU is more than powerful enough, considering the PC isn't designed for hardcore processing tasks. It's not as quick as a desktop PC that uses the equivalent 2GHz Core 2 Duo desktop CPU, but it scored 4,635 in PCMark 2005, which indicates it's one of the faster Media Center PCs we've reviewed. The Evesham Mini PC Plus, by comparison, scored 3,232.

Graphics performance was also good, for a Media Center PC. It racked up a 3DMark 2006 tally of 1,972, which isn't as high as the score achieved by the Acer TravelMate 8215WLMi laptop -- that scored 2,058. In real-world tests, the Xtc2_02 scored 32 frames per second in F.E.A.R. at the maximum graphic detail settings and a resolution of 1,024x768 pixels. Ultimately, the Xtc2_02 isn't a gaming-oriented PC, but it'll let you enjoy the odd bout of Half-Life 2 when you get bored of EastEnders.

Blu-ray playback was a mixed bag. The Xtc2_02 had no trouble displaying its wares over the graphics card's HDMI output (just plug and play), and the picture quality was reasonable -- but the video would stutter occasionally.

Another gripe is that the PC is unable to deliver audio over the HDMI connection -- this is surprising, as there's no audio pass-through cable from the on-board sound card to the graphics card. If you want audio, you'll have to connect speakers the old-fashioned way -- to the speaker sockets themselves.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Nick Hide