CNET Editors' Rating
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The good: The Asus Essentio CM6870 is a reasonably well-equipped mainstream PC that is one of the first to feature Intel's new third-generation (aka Ivy Bridge) Core i7 CPUs.
The bad: This boring commodity desktop has little to recommend it over similar systems, and Asus also focused too much on pleasing everyone with the configuration.
The bottom line: Intel's new CPUs are the most compelling feature in this new Asus Essentio CM6870 desktop. Otherwise, it's just another midtower.
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The bland-looking $999 Asus Essentio CM6870 is a noteworthy desktop only because it was the first desktop to show up in our lab with Intel's new Core i7 3000-series processors, aka Ivy Bridge. Thanks to that new chip, this desktop boasts some impressive application performance, including some of the fastest multitasking and multithreaded application speeds at its price. You can find a better gaming desktop elsewhere for the same price, and this Essentio would make a feeble upgrade platform, but it may have some appeal if you need a cavernous 2TB hard drive and strong CPU performance for under $1,000.
Despite the lukewarm recommendation, I'm actually excited to write about this system. It gave us a chance to rip out the discrete graphics card and test its new Intel HD 4000 embedded graphics core. You get better performance with the 3D card that comes with this desktop, but Intel can finally claim that it has credible budget graphics processing capability. You can read the full run-down of that testing here.
The Essentio's design will look familiar if you've seen any other commodity PC design in the past five years or so. Mainstream desktops remain a strong enough category that plain systems like this one still sell. I'm curious to see how PCs like these fare in the Windows 8 era, where so much of the focus seems to be on touch input.
Instead, the real excitement comes on the inside of this PC.
The big technology highlight of the Essentio is its Core i7 3770 processor, as well its Intel H77 chipset motherboard. The new CPU, the Core i7 3770, is one of the fastest in the third-generation Core series, bested only by the overclocking capabilities of the Core i7 3770K variant.
Technically speaking, the Core i7 3770 itself isn't that much different than the Core i7 2600 from the previous CPU generation. Both have a 3.4GHz clock speed, four physical processing cores, and the ability to scale workloads and clock speeds dynamically across eight processing threads.
The 3770 is a more efficient design than the 2600, with 22-nanometer transistors compared with the 32-nanometer design on the older chip. With smaller transistors, Intel can put more of them on a chip, which explains why you'll find 1.4 billion of them on the Core i7 3770, and only 1.16 billion on the Core i7 2600. Greater transistor density usually means high clock speeds, and thus faster performance.
With the new chip, of course, comes a new motherboard chipset, and with that some new capabilities. The big one is USB 3.0 support cooked into the new Intel 70-series chipsets. USB 3.0 was common enough in Sandy Bridge PCs, but to enable it, PC and motherboard vendors had to add their own supporting silicon. Now that USB 3.0 support is built right in, expect every third-generation Core-based system to include up to four USB 3.0 jacks. That's what you'll find on the Essentio.
For its other specs, the Asus Essentio CM6870 offers some competitive features for its price, but it skimps on others. The 2TB hard drive is larger than what you normally find under $1,000. There's also no guarantee that you'll find a Blu-ray drive in every system at that price, either. I would trade either or both of those features for a better graphics card, though. The budget Nvidia GeForce GT 545 graphics card is reasonably capable, but an uptick to a GeForce GT 555 or its AMD equivalent would offer a larger 3D performance cushion.
The HP Pavilion Elite h8xt provides the comparison to note in our performance charts. That system and its second generation Core i7 2600 chip represents the most direct generation-to-generation CPU comparison with this Asus.
On all but our Photoshop CS5 test, the Asus enjoys a small, but measureable performance edge over the HP system. The difference on Photoshop CS5 has to do with the impact of the graphics card in aiding the processing tasks on that test. The HP's midrange card lends a rather significant hand to its CS5 performance, keeping it ahead of the Asus by almost a minute. Photo and video editors, take note.
Despite the lukewarm recommendation, I'm actually excited to write about this system. It gave us a chance to rip out the discrete graphics card and test its new Intel HD 4000 embedded graphics core. You get better performance with the 3D card that comes with this desktop, but Intel can finally claim that it has credible budget graphics processing capability. You can read the full run-down of that testing here.
The Essentio's design will look familiar if you've seen any other commodity PC design in the past five years or so. Mainstream desktops remain a strong enough category that plain systems like this one still sell. I'm curious to see how PCs like these fare in the Windows 8 era, where so much of the focus seems to be on touch input.
Instead, the real excitement comes on the inside of this PC.
| Asus Essentio CM6870 | HP Pavilion Elite Phoenix h9z | Alienware x51 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $999 | $1,049 | $999 |
| Motherboard chipset | Intel H77 | AMD 970X | Intel H61 |
| CPU | 3.4GHz Intel Core i7 3770 | 2.8GHZ AMD FX-8100 | 3.0GHz Intel Core i5 2320 |
| Memory | 8GB 1,600MHz DDR3 SDRAM | 8GB 1,333MHz DDR3 SDRAM | 8GB 1,333MHz DDR3 SDRAM |
| Graphics | 1GB Nvidia GT545M | 1GB Nvidia GeForce 550 Ti | 1GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 555 |
| Hard drives | 2TB 7,200 rpm | 1TB 7,200 rpm | 1TB 7,200 rpm |
| Optical drive | Blu-ray/DVD burner combo | Blu-ray/DVD burner combo | dual-layer DVD burner |
| Operating system | Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) | Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) | Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) |
Technically speaking, the Core i7 3770 itself isn't that much different than the Core i7 2600 from the previous CPU generation. Both have a 3.4GHz clock speed, four physical processing cores, and the ability to scale workloads and clock speeds dynamically across eight processing threads.
The 3770 is a more efficient design than the 2600, with 22-nanometer transistors compared with the 32-nanometer design on the older chip. With smaller transistors, Intel can put more of them on a chip, which explains why you'll find 1.4 billion of them on the Core i7 3770, and only 1.16 billion on the Core i7 2600. Greater transistor density usually means high clock speeds, and thus faster performance.
With the new chip, of course, comes a new motherboard chipset, and with that some new capabilities. The big one is USB 3.0 support cooked into the new Intel 70-series chipsets. USB 3.0 was common enough in Sandy Bridge PCs, but to enable it, PC and motherboard vendors had to add their own supporting silicon. Now that USB 3.0 support is built right in, expect every third-generation Core-based system to include up to four USB 3.0 jacks. That's what you'll find on the Essentio.
For its other specs, the Asus Essentio CM6870 offers some competitive features for its price, but it skimps on others. The 2TB hard drive is larger than what you normally find under $1,000. There's also no guarantee that you'll find a Blu-ray drive in every system at that price, either. I would trade either or both of those features for a better graphics card, though. The budget Nvidia GeForce GT 545 graphics card is reasonably capable, but an uptick to a GeForce GT 555 or its AMD equivalent would offer a larger 3D performance cushion.
Apple iTunes encoding test (in seconds)(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Asus Essentio CM6870 (Core i7 3770, Nvidia GT 545, April 2012)
85
Adobe Photoshop CS3 image-processing test (in seconds)(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Asus Essentio CM6870 (Core i7 3770, Nvidia GT 545, April 2012)
57
Adobe Photoshop CS5 image-processing test (in seconds)(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Asus Essentio CM6870 (Core i7 3770, Nvidia GT 545, April 2012)
258
Multimedia multitasking (in seconds)(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Asus Essentio CM6870 (Core i7 3770, Nvidia GT 545, April 2012)
244
Cinebench 11.5(Longer bars indicate better performance)
 | Rendering Multiple CPUs | | Rendering Single CPU |
Asus Essentio CM6870 (Core i7 3770, Nvidia GT 545, April 2012)
7.52
1.64
On all but our Photoshop CS5 test, the Asus enjoys a small, but measureable performance edge over the HP system. The difference on Photoshop CS5 has to do with the impact of the graphics card in aiding the processing tasks on that test. The HP's midrange card lends a rather significant hand to its CS5 performance, keeping it ahead of the Asus by almost a minute. Photo and video editors, take note.
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