Product Reviews

The Multivision turned heads in the Buyer Labs. This isn't due to any one star component, but rather, because it's the first system we've seen to couple nVidia's new nForce motherboard chipset and AMD's Athlon XP processor. We met both components last month, but in different systems, and I was eager to see how they work as a team. Some testing and tinkering later, and I wasn't disappointed. Not only is the Multivision a swift performer, it's a great buy too.

At the heart of the Multivision, the nVidia nForce integrates the graphics, audio and Ethernet networking. Most significantly, the integrated graphics are nVidia's own GeForce2 MX, which is a lot faster than any other integrated offering on the market. There's no dedicated graphics memory - instead it's drawn from main system memory, with 8, 16 or 32Mb selectable in the BIOS.

Because nForce is so new, the motherboard in this PC is an early engineering sample - sometimes called a reference design. If you buy this system, I'm told it will arrive with a very similar finished production board made by MSI.

In 3DMark 2001, the graphics achieved a score of 1532, which is certainly enough to keep many games happy. The great thing about the nForce is that if offers flexibility. When the onboard graphics eventually are found wanting - and that time will certainly come - it'll be no problem to slip in a Ge-Force4, or whatever the current 3D superpower is at the time.

Beating at the heart of the nForce is an Athlon XP 1500+ processor. This is the lowest rating of the new line of AMD 'XP' CPUs, and actually runs at 1.33GHz. It's certainly no slouch, despite being at the bottom of AMD's pecking order. Indeed, it helped propel the Multivision to a score of 4497 in our 2D benchmarks - a record for a £599 PC.

The Multivison's 256Mb of RAM is stored on a single DIMM with two sockets free for further additions, while one of the two PCI slots is also free.

There's also a third slot that we mistook for another PCI slot at first. It actually turned out to be a CNR

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(Communication Network Riser). Occupying this was an unusual-looking card that sports five connectors at the back. Two of these are audio line outs. They work in conjunction with the other audio connectors that sit on the back of the motherboard, to output the six audio channels of Dolby Digital soundtracks. To take advantage of this, a set of Creative's excellent 2200 speakers are included. Incidentally, the nForce can also encode Dolby Digital on the fly - an nVidia innovation that is redundant here, but is used by the also-nVidia-based X-Box games console to output digital audio so that you can then feed it into a home cinema system.

The two remaining sockets on the back of the CNR card provide a 56K modem and an Ethernet port, while the optical connecter on the CNR card can be used to output to MiniDisc. It seems, therefore, rather odd that a modem sits in one of the PCI slots, but Multivision informed me this was because the integrated modem doesn't work in the nForce driver version that I received. This will be remedied in the final version.

Internally, the Multivision is nice and tidy, thanks to rounded IDE cables that take up less space than their flat, wide, ribbon-like cousins.

There is ample storage provided by a 40Gb, 7,200rpm Seagate hard disk. A 16-speed Pioneer DVD-ROM drive sits in the top bay, and below this a 16-speed CD-R burner. This offers 12-speed CD-R/W writing too.

Ergonomically the Multivision isn't half bad, either. With a refresh rate of only 85 times a second at a maximum resolution of 1,024x768, the Hansol 705D might not be the sharpest or brightest 17in monitor I've seen, but these are the settings most people use, so more is a luxury and not a necessity. The screen is clear too and virtually flat, which helps fend off annoying reflections. There are also bags of picture-shape controls to help you get the best from it.

The keyboard is also a revelation. Made by Logitech, it was extremely comfortable to type on, while the mouse is a stalwart Logitech model featuring a central scrolling wheel that also acts as a middle button. To round off an already decent feature list, Multivision includes a Thrustmaster force-feedback joypad and three current games.

For those looking for an affordable, yet powerful games machine, the Multivision will more than satisfy the kids (and Dad, when Mum isn't looking). Indeed, it seems the combination of nVidia nForce chipset and an Athlon XP, have come up trumps for Multivision. And when such performance is coupled with excellent sound, networking, a DVD-ROM and a CD-R/W, this is easily the best PC you could hope for at £599.