Product Reviews

There was a time when AMD's processors played second fiddle to Intel's superior products. Sure, we did recommended PCs with AMD's K6-2 processor back then, but in the final analysis Intel's Celeron was the better chip. Celeron was faster and more powerful, and AMD-based systems had to be cheaper in order to compete.

Today the story is radically different. AMD's Athlon has shown a clean pair of heels to Pentium III, and Duron has whipped Celeron into a cocked hat.

Panrix's Nitro 700 is built around a 700MHz Duron, ably supported by 128Mb of RAM. Both components are seated on a Microstar K7T Pro motherboard. If a day comes when you need more power, the Panrix will accept more RAM and a faster processor easily. Indeed, if you fancy an Athlon, as opposed to a Duron, in a year's time, you can just drop one in.

The PC has a 15Gb IBM disk. Though this sounds rather large, 15Gb is a whisker below average for systems costing £850. According to IBM's web site, the Deskstar drive has an UltraATA 66 interface and spins at 7,200rpm. Add all this together and you have a fast hard drive.

The Panrix also has a Pioneer DVD-104 drive. This can spin DVDs at 10-speed and CDs at a respectable 40-speed. At the moment the main reason for owning such a drive is watching DVD movies, which you can hire with increasing frequency from video libraries.

As a movie machine, the Panrix is excellent. The teaming

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of the Pioneer, a GeForce-based graphics card, and the fast Duron processor, makes easy work of even the most complex and demanding scenes. Indeed, in our standard test, the Panrix didn't miss a beat, drop a frame orleave any messy decompression artifacts on the screen.

This PC is also a great gaming system. It scores 4393 in MadOnion.com's 3DMark 2000 test. This is an excellent score, demonstrating that the Panrix will be easily able to power any of today's complex and good-looking games. Again, the combination of a powerful processor and a fast graphics card is the key to its success.

The Hercules graphics card feeds a ViewSonic E70 monitor. In testing, this display performed very well. It has a clean and crisp image quality and suffers from no blurring in any of the corners. It's slightly curved, though, which could make it prone to reflections in brightly-lit environments.

Image controls are simplicity itself - a line of four buttons and a clear and colourful on-screen display. What's more, a plethora of tweaks and changes will enable even the most ardent of perfectionists to set the monitor up to their taste.

Sound is handled by a set of Labtec Spin-70 speakers, an excellent budget choice. They may feel and look a little flimsy, but they sound great.

Concluding the story is an Accuratus Cerratech keyboard which, though rather plasticky, does have an excellent feel and is very comfy to use. Indeed, thanks to its built-in wrist rest, I found I could type long documents without experiencing aching wrists - the bane of any hypochondriac journalist. The mouse is a standard Microsoft IntelliMouse - again comfortable to use.

The Panrix Nitro 700 is an excellent system. It boasts an impressive score of 2598 in our standard benchmark tests. This beats all the Duron-based systems from last month's Lab Test. The Panrix costs £50 more than those, but it's money well spent. The Panrix certainly deserves a Recommended award for its fine mix of value and performance.