Product Reviews

Intel is by far the best known maker of processors for the PC. Apart from inventing the PC processor blueprint, it has built a formidable reputation by consistently producing the brawniest chips on the block. Only rarely does another producer bring out an Intel-beating product, but this month it's happened. AMD's Athlon now takes the honours as the fastest mainstream chip currently available, and Evesham Micros deserve kudos for being the first supplier to get one to us.

Without going into the details of its superscalar pipelined architecture, the really important fact about Athlon is that it's a totally new CPU design. AMD went back to square one, and this means the Athlon does not inherit the main weakness of the earlier K6 series - the relatively slow floating point unit. Instead Athlon has a novel implementation, with three streamlined execution units to cope with floating point, MMX and 3DNow! instructions separately. This means maths heavy applications - particularly 3D gaming - will fly on an Athlon. And AMD has added enough cache to make sure system memory doesn't hold it back - a staggering 128K primary plus 512K full-speed secondary cache.

Derived from Alpha technology developed by Digital, a high-end computer company, the Athlon looks remarkably like a PII or PIII. However, instead of using Intel's Slot 1 connection, it actually sits in what AMD calls Slot A. AMD has launched its own '750' motherboard chipset too, and this forms a formidable double-act with the Athlon, eliminating many system bottlenecks that can hinder performance.

Duff components might have spoiled this impressive picture, but Evesham has installed some of the best. There's a monstrous 256Mb of PC100 SDRAM and a 20.4Gb UDMA66 Maxtor hard disk, spinning at a fast 7,200rpm.

Graphics come courtesy of Guillemot's Xentor 32 card. Based on the nVidia TNT2 Ultra chipset, it's particularly good for 3D games. Indeed, in last month's graphics card group test the Xentor 32 was in the top three performers. Evesham also includes a

ADVERTISEMENT

five-speed Panasonic DVD drive, complete with Cyberlink's PowerDVD software player for movies, but the results weren't exactly stunning. Image quality was right up there with some hardware DVD kit, but playback often suffered from sporadic jerks. Software that uses the Xentor 32's built-in DVD acceleration would have been better.

That's a shame, because we'd be perfectly happy watching movies, or doing pretty much anything else on the Taxan 19in monitor supplied. It's bright, tightly focused and sharp. It can manage a steady 85Hz refresh rate at the extreme 1,280x1,024 resolution, and an even higher one when used at the more sensible 1,024x768.

The movie experience is greatly enhanced by Cambridge SoundWorks FourPointSurround speakers. While the sound emanating from the four speakers and subwoofer doesn't compare to a full living-room home cinema set-up, it works perfectly well in a smaller, quieter environment. As the Sound Blaster Live! Value sound card also supports Direct3D audio and EAX environmental audio standards, you can also expect some impressive surround-sound effects in games.

The KeyTronic keyboard and Logitech mouse are run of the mill but perfectly decent, the mouse featuring the now-obligatory scroll wheel. You also get the new Castlewood Orb drive. If you want to shift data to a 2.2Gb removable disc at around 7.1Mbytes/sec, the Orb is your boy. It's faster than Iomega's Jaz drive, and only needs to win mass-market acceptance for a bright future. That just leaves Internet access, for which the supplied Diamond 56K PCI modem is fine.

There's still room for expansion inside the old-fashioned, metal-shelled, midi-tower case. Another three PCI cards could be fitted, or three ISA, if you're so inclined. One SDRAM DIMM slot remains available, and the system can also take an externally accessible 5.25in-wide drive, and an internal 3.5in device.

In summary, then, this system has it all: ludicrously fast performance, good peripherals, oodles of storage and real 3D oomph. It's considerably faster than a PIII 600 in our Windows 98 application speed tests, and in 3Dmark 99 it reaches 6591 3Dmarks, compared to the Intel's 5642. That's overkill for many users, but gamers in particular will love this level of horsepower.

The inevitable problem is the price. You are getting your money's worth, but it's still a lot of money. The good news is that Athlon won't stay at this price level forever, and 500 and 550MHz versions are already on their way for those of us with more modest budgets. For now, though, the Evesham's Athlon 600 remains the province of a very lucky few.