Product Reviews

Here's a question: how do you take the latest AMD processor and put it in a system costing just £699? Simple. You cut costs elsewhere. Now, there are right ways and wrong ways of doing this, some leading to a machine that delivers on speed and remains very usable, and some resulting in a hideous abomination that no-one would like on their desk.

You can see that Systemax has made some cost-conscious choices with the Inspire 7152, but as long as your expectations aren't unrealistic you won't find any of them too horrific. For one thing, where other manufacturers would cut costs - on the monitor, for example - there's little to complain about. Nobody would describe the supplied 17in CTX monitor as a fabulous display, but it is a very competent flat screen shadow-mask job with a steady 80Hz image at 1,024x768. It won't really go any higher at a sensible refresh rate, but then you wouldn't really want it to.

The speakers are more surprising, as Systemax has included our Top 50-listed VideoLogic ZX500 5.1 set. They're small, slightly ugly and have a tacky silver finish, but for sound quality they're better than anything else in the sub-£100 price range. I can't fault the keyboard and mouse either - both solid Logitech models with Systemax branding. Even the PC case doesn't show signs of cheapness. Sure, it's dull, but at least Systemax has gone to the effort of putting USB ports at the front where you can reach them easily.

It's only once you get inside this PC that you can see the signs of cost-cutting. For a start, there's no sound card, with audio coming from a Realtek ALC650 chip built into the MSI motherboard. This led to some confusion at first, as the only audio sockets available are the standard one output, two inputs. "Why give me 5.1 surround speakers

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when we've only got stereo output", I asked. Then I found a control panel utility that lets you reconfigure the sockets as 5.1 outputs. That done and you'll get full surround sound. Sadly, the other advantages of a regular sound card, such as support for the latest EAX in-game effects, really are missing.

The other connections are bare-bones, with no Ethernet or FireWire, although you do get another 2 USB ports and a 56K modem at the rear. At least there's plenty of room for adding extra features through the 4 available PCI slots, while two 3.5in drive bays and one 5.25in bay should keep you in additional storage should the 60Gb IBM DeskStar hard drive and the Samsung DVD-ROM and CD-R/W drives prove wanting.

Get deeper in the spec and more signs of cost-cutting emerge. The Athlon XP2200+ is sitting pretty in a KT3 Ultra motherboard, which uses the VIA KT333 chipset and supports PC2700 DDR RAM. However, Systemax hasn't really made the most of it: the 256Mb DDR RAM filling one of three available slots is PC2100 speed, so you don't get the full benefit of pairing the fastest Athlon with the fastest available memory.

More seriously, those looking for cutting edge 3D graphics will go away disappointed. The nVidia GeForce4 MX 440 is the mid-range GeForce4 MX, fast enough to cope with any current 3D game, but it's not what we would call a 'proper' GeForce4, as there's no support for DirectX 8 pixel and vertex shaders. And while that's just techno-babble for now, it will make a difference when the likes of Doom 3 and Unreal 2 appear. They won't look as good on this card as they would on a GeForce3 or GeForce4 Ti.

Still, you can't expect miracles, and you won't find a GeForce4 Ti in any other PC at this price. The 3D benchmark results are still respectable, with a score of 6183 in 3DMark 2001 at 1,024x768, 32-bit colour, while the 2D scores are actually seriously impressive, with the £699 Systemax scoring higher than this month's £1,276 Advent Pentium 4.

That's great, but I still have to question the wisdom of putting a top-end Athlon into a PC where the other components don't really make the most of it. If the price was £100 higher and we had PC2700 DDR and a GeForce4 Ti4200, this would be an incredible bargain that I'd be telling you to snap up this minute. As it is, the Systemax is simply a very good system for the money.