Product Reviews

You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. You get what you pay for. Pay cheap, buy twice. There are many sayings that warn against unbelievable bargains, and they apply to PCs as much as anything else. You only have to leaf through adverts of PCs for a few hundred quid and you'll see trouble lurking in the shape of nameless processors or anonymous "high performance" graphics cards. Happily, though, machines can sometimes buck the trend, and the Evesham Quest C800 is an outstanding example.

Evesham has managed to pack in an 800MHz processor, 128Mb of PC133 SDRAM, a decent 3D graphics card, a 20Gb Ultra-ATA 100 hard drive, a 17in monitor and a DVD drive, without losing that magical low, low price. How? Well, let's just say that Evesham has made a few budget-conscious decisions.

First, there's the CPU. The Quest C800 is based on Via's new 800MHz C3, a next-generation processor based on a combination of Cyrix and Centaur technologies - Via now owns both companies. With 128K of Level 1 cache and 64K of Level 2 cache plus support for a 133MHz front side bus, the C3 is no-where near as limited as previous Via/Cyrix processors, and the use of a .13 micron manufacturing process has resulted in a really tiny CPU. This in turn means lower manufacturing costs, low power consumption and much less heat - the Quest C800's C3 only needs a heatsink, not a massive fan. And as the C3 fits (physically, at least) into the standard Celeron/Pentium III Socket 370, manufacturers

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don't need to buy in weird motherboards to use it. (Actually, not every Socket 370 motherboard will run a C3, but many do, including those based on Via's own chipsets.)

The Quest's C3 sits in a Chaintech motherboard based on the Via PM133 integrated chipset, which includes built-in S3 Savage 4 graphics technology and Via SM18737 PCI Audio. However, Evesham hasn't relied on the S3 graphics, and although the decision to fit a separate nVidia GeForce2 MX graphics card must have pushed costs up, it's definitely a smart move. Previous Cyrix processors didn't have the best technology for the tricky geometric calculations demanded by 3D games, and combining them with integrated graphics was frequently a recipe for disaster.

The new C3 architecture has improved that, and the addition of the GeForce2 MX card means that the Quest C800 isn't a bad games machine. It can run Quake III Arena at 47fps at 1024x768 in 32-bit colour, and the scores in 3DMark 2000 and 2001 - 3636 and 1402 respectively - aren't actually that bad. Thanks to the unbranded 12-speed DVD-ROM drive, the Quest C800 can even handle some reasonable DVD playback, although I did spot some iffy pixels in dark-coloured backgrounds.

Compared to many other 17in monitors, the Quest C800's Vibrant 17in display is dull, fuzzy, overly curved and suffers from poor power regulation, but is it usable? Well, even a snob like me could easily live with it. The same goes for the Creative speakers and the keyboard - they do the job, but if you're expecting high-quality and luxury, forget it. 'No frills' best describes the peripherals.

In most reviews of a £499 system, it would be at this point that I'd let eager buyers down with talk of tortoise-like performance. But the overall score of 2550 is actually quite respectable. Unless you're planning to get involved with really fancy games, graphics or video work, you'll find the Quest C800 perfectly satisfactory. If you've only £500 to spend, you'll be hard pushed to spend it better than on the Evesham Quest C800.