Sapphire Edge HD2 Mini PC Review

Setup & Testing Procedures
The Edge HD2 comes with Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit installed so you don’t need to install anything when you set it up.  Everything works right out of the box so you can easily get setup.  Let’s open up CPU-Z and see what we are working with.

Sapphire Edge HD2 Mini PC Sapphire Edge HD2 Mini PC Sapphire Edge HD2 Mini PC Sapphire Edge HD2 Mini PC

For comparison purposes we will be testing the Sapphire Edge HD2 against the recently reviewed Zotac ZBOX HD-AD02 Plus.  Here are the specs on each system.

Sapphire Edge HD2
CPU: Intel® Atom™ D525 1.8GHz
Memory: 2048 MB DDR3-800 So-DIMM
Graphics: 512 MB NVIDIA® ION™ 2
Storage: 320 GB SATA 2.5” Hard Drive
Operation System: Windows® 7 Ultimate

Zotac ZBOX HD-AD02 Plus
CPU: Intel® Atom™ D525 1.8GHz
Memory: 2048 MB DDR3 1066 SO-DIMM
Graphics: AMD Radeon™ HD 6310
Storage: 250 GB SATA 2.5” Hard Drive
Operation System: Windows® 7 Ultimate

We will be running both systems through a battery of different benchmarks and tests.  I have organized them in to different categories.

General System Testing
Windows Experience Index
Boxee (download)
Windows Media Center
HD Movie Playback

Intensive Testing
PCMark 7 (download)
PC Mark Vantage (download)
Geekbench (download)
AIDA 64 (download)
– Cache & Memory Benchmark
SiSoftware Sandra (download)
– Processor Arithmetic
– Processor Multimedia
– Sandra Physical Disks

Video Testing
3DMark Vantage (download)
Counter-Strike: Source (Buy)

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