Product Reviews

For this price we expect a PC that's perfect, or at least within spitting distance of perfection. And that's just what we got, in the shape of the Evesham Axis 1900+. Machines this fast are enough to make us wet our pants with excitement. Well, almost.

Features

Yep, you read that right: 512Mb. We had to double-check that too. That's more than enough memory to run any commercially available software. And if you want to use lots of software, you'll need lots of disk space to install it. That's OK, because this system comes with a whopping 80Gb of storage space. OK, so the core spec's a knockout - but for this price you want more than just a good base system. You want a few goodies, too. The Axis doesn't disappoint. It includes Creative's latest sound card, the Sound Blaster Audigy. Not only does the Audigy have the highest playback sample rate of any Creative sound card, leading to much better quality audio when you're playing games, listening to movies or watching DVDs, it also has a FireWire port thrown in. FireWire is a fast type of connection that's used to transfer large files to your PC at high speed from devices like digital video cameras. A surround-sound sound card, however, isn't much cop without some decent surround sound speakers. Fortunately you get Creative's classic DTT2200 set with this PC, providing you with everything you need for home cinema and gaming.

Ergonomics

This PC comes with an optical mouse that we have no reservations about at all. Not only do you get all the advantages

ADVERTISEMENT

of having no moving parts, you also get a piece of kit that's comfortable to use and pleasingly accurate. The keyboard is a Microsoft Internet Keyboard, a peripheral well known in the Buyer labs for its quality. They keys are large and well spaced, with a firm and comfortable action and there are lots of useful feature buttons (to open mail, your browser, and so on). Power shielding on the Samsung SyncMaster monitor is without equal, letting you watch fast moving images without flicker or distortion, and focus is hairline fine. There's some slight misconvergence in the corners, but nothing to get too agitated about.

Expansion

There are only two free PCI slots left on this PC's Asus A7V266-E motherboard. Unless you're really attached to your old MIDI joystick, however, you can whip out the extra backplate that holds the MIDI port (there isn't one on board the Audigy), and free up another one. Even without this, however, the Axis doesn't do badly on expansion. Although there are only two PCI slots, you do get four USB ports. This provides you with lots of opportunities to add more features and functions to your PC. You also get one of every type of drive bay to play with, so you can install a new hard drive, CD drive and a Zip drive if you like.

Performance

Any machine that gets over 10000 in 3DMark 2000 gets our attention straight away. This PC shows just how good ATI's Radeon 8500 graphics card is. nVidia may be everywhere these days, but they don't have everything their own way yet. It's not just the graphics card that makes this kind of performance possible, though: 512Mb of super-fast DDR RAM and an Athlon XP 1900+ don't hurt either.

Overall

We've come to have high expectations of Evesham, but this time the company really has surpassed itself. The Axis is perfect for gaming, home cinema and more or less anything else you want to do with it. The good thing about a PC in this price range is that it will do everything the other PCs will, and more. The great thing about the Axis is that it will easily tackle even more than you'd expect a £999 PC to be able to handle.