The most striking thing about both these PCs is their looks.
They’re both housed in very sleek and attractive looking cabinets. In fact,
both PCs seem to have been designed around some theme. The Elite has a nice
dual-color scheme combining silver with blue, and the Ultima is off-white and
extremely curvaceous.
The
Elite’s cabinet, however, is so compact that it leaves little room for
expansion. There is only one PCI slot on the motherboard, which too is almost
impossible to use. So this isn’t a good choice for people who want to pump up
their PC with lots of hardware. It’s powered by a PIII/650 on an Intel 810
motherboard. Audio and video are integrated on the motherboard. However, the
integrated video hampers its performance in 3D applications as well as games. On
an average, we got frame rates of about 17 fps in Quake III Arena. The business
applications front was slightly better, since most applications are more
processor intensive than graphics dependent.
The Ultima, on the other hand, is much more powerful and has
plenty of room for expansion. It’s powered by a PIII/650, 128 MB RAM, 20.4 GB
hard disk, 17" monitor, and a Riva TNT2 Ultra AGP card with 32 MB VRAM.
Surprisingly, it has two sound cards, one of which is onboard. It also includes
a DVD drive to enrich the multimedia experience. It’s good in performance too,
be it games or business applications.
Both PCs come with a good software bundle. The Ultima is
priced at Rs 79,990. Even though this is high, its performance and features
justify it. The Elite is an average performer and slightly expensive at Rs
59,990.