Product Reviews

At the risk of sounding like a war-mongering Hollywood-style US general, I do believe that second best is not an option. When you're buying a PC, that is. There's no point buying a machine with which you're going to have niggles or dissatisfactions. You want a PC that'll make you pleased each time you switch it on.

The problem is, few of us can afford the very best. What we need is a compromise - a system that offers just enough speed and features, but doesn't cost the earth. Something like the Evesham Axis 1200DDR.

At the heart of the Axis is a 900MHz AMD Athlon. "So what?" you might say. "Just last month, Buyer reviewed a 1.2GHz Athlon from Mesh." True, when you look at the raw specification of the Evesham, it does pale next to the monster Mesh. But the Mesh costs half as much again - a differential that could buy a week's holiday for two. So, the Axis is aimed at the cost-conscious user with a life beyond their computer room.

What's more, if you're patient, the Evesham has bags of potential. Its Asus A7M266 motherboard will support a 1.2GHz Athlon, so when your 900MHz system begins to feel a little slow there is upgrade potential. This is important, as the technology cockfight between Intel and AMD has sent chip speeds spiralling and prices plummeting.

The Athlon is backed up with 128Mb of PC1600 DDR RAM. We first saw DDR memory last month in the Mesh. Unlike normal SDRAM, which can send one packet of data per clock cycle, DDR RAM sends two. This makes it faster - if it were possible to slip some vanilla SDRAM into the Axis in place of the DDR memory, you'd see performance tumble.

As a rule, 128Mb of RAM is the figure you should always aim for. If you have less, Windows will have to employ a 'swap file' - cordoning off a section of the hard disk and using

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it as pretend RAM. This stops your PC from complaining it's out of memory but, on the down side, it slows your system down - RAM is far quicker than even the fastest hard disks.

Working alongside the memory is a 40Gb Maxtor hard disk. In a £1,350 PC, 40Mb is a generous amount of disk space. Any vendor offering less than 30Mb for this price is a bit of a Scrooge.

A Samsung CD-R/W and DVD combination drive has been fitted - a cheaper option than a separate DVD drive and CD writer. On the down side, it makes copying CDs a little less straightforward. But with a little practice and your burning software set up correctly, you should soon work effortlessly around the inconvenience of having just one drive.

The graphics card is an Asus AGP-V7100 Deluxe Combo v6.31. Thankfully, the card's manufacturers put more effort into board's design than its rather dull name. The Asus uses a GeForce2 MX chip to power 3D graphics. This is the same chip used by the Hercules 3D Prophet II MX - our current Top 50 graphics card. We like GeForce2 MX, as it offers a good helping of the GeForce2's famous 3D gaming speed but avoids the ludicrous cost of the posher GeForce2 Ultra chipset.

The V7100 also packs a TV tuner, making it very similar to ATI's new All-In-Wonder Radeon. The latter is a personal favourite, so it's great to see the excellent GeForce2 MX chip being mated with TV tuner circuitry to produce a product of similar capabilities. Sure, Asus's Live Control TV interface is less well designed than ATI's, but the card makes up for this with fast 3D graphics and a lower cost than its Radeon-based rival.

The Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 730 monitor that arrived with our test system was a disappointment. At the left-hand side of the screen, the image quivered. Increasing the monitor's refresh rate from 85Hz to 100Hz improved the situation - but it's still unacceptable.

Sound is handled by a Sound Blaster Live! Value card and a set of Creative FourPointSurround FPS1000 speakers. The setup is great for gaming, but if you fancy watching DVD movies on your new PC, it would be worth upgrading this set to one with five satellites.

Despite all its plus points, I can't recommend the Evesham Axis. The uninspiring performance and the disappointing monitor make the price seem a bit steep. If you're looking for a fast system you'd do better to buy this month's Polar.