Product Reviews

In the past couple of months we've seen some corking gaming PCs that use the latest graphics cards and processors to really crank up their performance. Trouble is, along with their whopping great 3D scores, they've all come with a pretty hefty price tag too. This new PC from Systemax changes that. It's got a graphics card built around the same top-end technology, but at a price that's affordable for all.

Gaming power

The Inspire's graphics card is an MSI GeForce 6800LE with 128MB of RAM. In order to cut costs, it uses a slightly slower version of the chips used in other 6800 cards, and has less memory. Its score of 17,112 in our 3D speed test isn't quite as good as the more expensive 6800 and X800 graphics cards - we've seen scores of 20,000 and above - but it's still very good. You'll be able to play the latest games like Far Cry in beautiful detail.

This great-value graphics card has been paired with a great-value processor. Like the 6800LE graphics card, this isn't the fastest available, but it is based on the latest technology. It's an Athlon 64 3000+, AMD's so-called '64-bit' processor. This means it can handle 64 bits of information at once, rather than the previous 32 bits. This isn't much of a benefit with current software that's designed to work with 32-bit chips, but it will come into its own once 64-bit software becomes common. The Athlon 64 does, however, include lots of improvements that make it faster in the here and now. Coupled with a solid 512MB of RAM, the 3000+ pushed the Inspire 6017 to a cracking score of 1522 in our 2D speed test, which tests performance using everyday programs. That's more than enough for anything you'd want to throw at it.

Burning desires

Systemax has also included the latest technology in its choice of DVD writer. Of course, the Sony DWD18A is fast - its 8x burn speed means that it

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can create a full DVD in less than ten minutes - but this isn't the most impressive thing about it. More importantly, it can write to the new dual-layer DVDs. This is great for backing up your data, as you can cram more than 8GB of files onto a single disc. It's better still for recording video: you can fit four hours of DVD-quality footage on a single disc. With this drive, together with the Systemax's powerful processor and the FireWire port on the back of the case to plug in your DV camera, this PC would be an ideal choice for video editing. It's a shame that no video-editing software is included, but Systemax has thrown in a copy of Microsoft Works 7, which will be good for general family use.

An eye on the future

The Inspire 6017 offers impressive scope for future upgrades. The five free USB ports and FireWire connector will allow you to plug in plenty of external gadgets and accessories, and inside there are four PCI slots available for adding new hardware. Only one of the three slots available for optical drives is used, so you could easily add an extra DVD or CD drive to allow disc-to-disc copying.

The ZXR-200s, which won a Recommended award in our June issue, are top-notch speakers that produce clean treble and thumping bass. As this is a gaming PC, it would have been nice to get speakers that made use of the Inspire's 7.1 surround sound capabilities, but you can't get everything for £799. The CTX S762A monitor is almost identical to the S762G that won a Top 50 award in our May issue. The only difference is that the S762A doesn't have a digital DVI connector. This is a shame, as digital DVI connections produce better quality images, but the S762A is still an excellent monitor. Images were sharp and bright, and the 16-millisecond response time is fast enough to avoid smearing fast-moving games graphics. Only the viewing angles left a little to be desired, with colours changing as you moved from a head-on position. The PC case itself is a little dowdy.

Buying decisions

For its price, the Inspire is a games beast: great if you want to do demanding things like play games or watch DVDs. It's not perfect; even a cheap set of surround sound speakers would have been nice, and we'd have liked a slightly better keyboard and mouse, plus a DVD-ROM drive. But even without these finishing touches, it's astonishing value. If you want the best 3D performance you can get for £800, the Inspire 6017 is the PC for you.