Product Reviews

So you fancy a fast PC, but don't want to pay the earth? Well, until recently you had two options. First, you could get an Arthur Daley job, pushed off the back of a lorry. The PC may have accumulated a few dents, but your bank balance wouldn't: fifty quid, cash in hand - and, no, you can't have a receipt! The second alternative was to buy a PC based on Intel's Celeron chip. Intel's budget baby was fast enough to power most applications, right up to pretty demanding games.

Then came a third alternative: the AMD Duron, and suddenly it was the Celeron option that looked most like daylight robbery. Duron was faster than Celeron and it was cheaper. And this month, the story has just got worse for Intel, with 800MHz Durons loose on our manor. Computer Buyer exclusively apprehended one and interrogated it in the Labs.

Breaking into the Atlas was something of a dream. All you've to do is flip a handle and pull down the machine's side. Nothing could be more simple. Once inside, the Atlas reveals itself to be a tidy little number. All the cables are clipped and tied out of the way, so rummaging around inside the case should be an easy job.

The PC is based on an Asus A7V motherboard, which is a great starting block for any AMD-based system. Firstly, the Asus offers 'jumper-free' setup for your CPU. Previously, setting up a processor was a rather fiddly job, in which you had to manoeuvre an array of small plastic 'jumpers'. The whole process was made all the more difficult by the myriad of permutations - and the titchiness of the switches. Eyebrow tweezers are excellent for the job. With the Asus, all you've to do is use a simple menu in the BIOS to configure the CPU speed. Nothing could be easier.

The Asus also supports up to eight IDE devices, such as hard disks, CD drives and Zip disks. This may sound excessive, but remember: most motherboards only support four. If you're a keen upgrader, you'd

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soon find this number restrictive, whereas the Atlas has bags of room for future expansion.

An IBM DTLA-307015 hard disk takes up one of these IDE sockets. It's an excellent drive, spinning at 7,200rpm and packing a UDMA-100 interface. With an excellent Approach score in our benchmarks, the IBM confirms itself as an excellent drive. Its size of 15Gb is a sore point though, as 20Gb is more usual in a machine costing nearly nine hundred quid.

The board also supports a maximum of 1,536Mb RAM. It's difficult to imagine an application that would need this amount of RAM, save manipulating massively complex graphics. But, if a day comes when you're struggling for something to spend your money on, the Atlas will prove a happy home for a few grand.

The processor is hidden from view under a fan and heatsink arrangement which looks like its been culled from a hovercraft. This is no bad thing: AMD Durons are renowned for running rather hot - I burned by fingers on the first one I saw.

Today, the Duron's 800MHz is an arresting figure but rest assured, AMD is brewing up faster ones. Again, the Asus board is ready, as it'll support a maximum processor speed of 1GHz. At the moment, a 1GHz Thunderbird Athlon costs £357 - nearly 40% of the Atlas' final asking price - but, as sure as eggs is eggs, they'll drop in price soon enough.

Graphics are handled by a Hercules 3D Prophet II MX - a card which is currently shining bright in our Top 50. It offers an as yet unbeatable mix of speed and sensible pricing. Combining the Duron with this card makes for an excellent 3D score of 4508.

The monitor too is excellent. The CTX PL7 has a wonderful picture, with everything being clearly resolved. Text is crisp and coloured images adorned with plenty of saturation and subtlety. Controls too are excellent, being simplicity itself to use.

Sound is generated by a Sound Blaster Live! 1024, a card which is as good for gaming as for playing MP3s. You'll also find an internal PCI Diamond 56K modem. This is your ticket to the Internet and will get you sending and receiving e-mails.

So what have we concluded about the Atlas D800CB? It's certainly a fast PC - clocking up 2786 in our benchmarks, which is a very respectable score. The PC is also comparatively cheap, despite the fact that it packs some excellent extras such as Teac's CD-W54EK CD-R/W. Adding all these factors together, I'm left with only one conclusion: the Atlas A800CB is a bargain, and well worth a place in our Top 50.