Product Reviews

With Windows Vista lurking just around the corner, you'd think it'd be sensible to delay the purchase of that much-needed new desktop PC. Thankfully, you don't have to as many manufacturers are starting to bundle Vista upgrade vouchers with their systems. This Eclipse Elite xFire i6600 comes with Windows XP Media Center 2005 as standard, but you can upgrade to Vista Home Premium next month for a nominal shipping fee - currently set by Microsoft at around £12.

That leaves you free to buy now and not miss out later, and at £822, the Eclipse is an impressively-featured system. It's based around the nippy Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 processor, which will happily cope with anything you could possibly throw at it. The xFire i6600 strolled effortlessly through our benchmarks, with a score of 181%, which is ably assisted by the 1GB of RAM. This is the minimum amount of memory we'd recommend for running Vista, particularly if you want to take advantage of the fancy translucent Aero Glass interface.

Not just a gamer

Gamers will be filled with festive cheer by the ATI Radeon X1950 XT graphics card and 19in widescreen TFT. The monitor has a native resolution of 1440 x 900 and showed a good range of contrast in our tests. The panel's inky blacks were matched by whites that were just about bright enough for our liking, although we noticed a slight green tinge in some scenes that we couldn't eliminate.

The only

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speakers supplied are those built into the monitor's bezel and while these are enough for day-to-day Windows use, gaming or listening to music will definitely benefit from external speakers. There are no such problems when it comes the visual side of things though, and the Eclipse's ATI X1950 XT graphics card will happily run today's games with all the effects switched on. Our Call of Duty 2 benchmark returned an incredible score of 193%, so there's more than enough power here for games.

The X1950 XT graphics also add a different dimension to the Eclipse and a port on the rear allows you to capture video from a camcorder or VCR onto your hard disk. You won't be at a loss for storing those hefty sized files either, thanks to the hefty 250GB hard drive and the Eclipse also has internal and external SATA ports to spare. Once you've finished editing, you can burn the results to disc using the dual-layer DVD writer, and there's a selection of media card slots on the front of the case for transferring photos from digital cameras.

Room to breathe

With Vista in mind, you'll want to ensure you can upgrade your new PC if the need arises and the Eclipse won't disappoint in this respect. Although the Eclipse only has 1GB of memory (2GB is really needed to run Vista), you can add more via the two free DIMM slots. There's also room for three PCI expansion cards, so a TV tuner can be added to take advantage of Media Center's versatile TV recording functions. And to keep everything running smoothly the xFire i6600 has a 600W power supply.

The Eclipse Elite xFire i6600 packs a good array of components into an affordable package. The Core 2 Duo E6600 processor will keep even the most demanding PC user happy for another Christmas or two and with the X1950XT in tow, it's a capable gaming machine that won't have you dipping back into your wallet in the near future. You'll need to factor delivery and that extra £12 into the price if you want to upgrade to Vista, but the Eclipse is still a great buy.