Introduction
This is the final leg of my recent Shuttle XPC-reviewing trilogy, one which started with a quartet of them arriving from Taiwan and has ended with me looking at only three. Tarinder grabbed one to check out what Shuttle are doing with recent XPC models, in order to refresh his memory since he gave up the XPC-reviewing position to let me have a go.The four models covered almost all of Shuttle's XPC bases. Both main AMD and Intel sockets, core logic from three vendors and three chassis variants were represented, with the only real commonality being a PCI Express slot for a discrete graphics board. Having a good look at them gave me a fine opportunity to take stock of Shuttle's XPC endeavours in recent months, to see how things are progressing with their designs and to see how well their integrating the latest technologies into new models.
Shuttle haven't been tardy to market for a long time, but that timely nature could pull the rug out from under them with one ill-timed slip in the race to release a new product as soon as there's something to create one around. A gust of wind has been known to cause a new XPC to escape from Shuttle's Taipei headquarters.
Today's excuse is Intel's recent release of i925XE core logic. Supporting an official 266MHz front-side bus frequency for the Pentium 4 Extreme Editions that support it, along with support for DDR2 system memory and PCI Express for graphics and add-in peripheral cards, i925XE is Intel's flagship core logic for single-core processors.
With an existing model based on the earlier i925X, Shuttle duly updated the mainboard platform inside that model - SB95P - and bumped the version number to create the SB95P v2.0. The official PC at the World Cyber Games no less, the SB95P v2.0 is Shuttle's most appealing product for the Pentium 4-owning power user. On the market for a while now, it's time for the HEXUS close look.
