Product Reviews

Apparently we live in the age of instant gratification - this must be true as it's often in the newspapers. But if that's the case, can anyone explain why, when you order a brand new computer, it can take a month or more for it arrive? Shouldn't you just be able to hand over your cash and walk away with your new PC? Yes you should - and now you can. Evesham Technology has teamed up with the retailer Argos to build a range of computers, including this Axis A4000 AS, which you can buy from Evesham's website and from your local Argos store - at least that's the theory.

AMD vs Intel

The processor in the Axis A4000 AS is a dual-core Athlon 64 X2 3800+. AMD's X2 range of processors may have had its thunder stolen by Intel's Core 2 chips, but make no mistake, this is still a powerful processor. The Evesham eased home to a good score of 123% in our 2D benchmarks - that may be around 20% behind a comparable Core 2 processor, but it certainly won't have a problem running most software currently available. Games performance, by comparison, was rather disappointing - only 46% in our Call of Duty benchmarks, due to its slightly underpowered GeForce 7600LE graphics chip. That's enough oomph to play older games, but you'll only be able to run newer ones if you turn the detail settings down.

It's a shame that Evesham wasn't able to put more memory and a better graphics card into this system. The Mesh Elite E6400 base unit that won our group test this month (page 69)

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cost £599. If you were to buy the E6400 along with the monitor, keyboard and mouse that comes with Evesham's Axis A4000, it would cost the same as the A4000. Yet the Mesh system comes with 2GB of RAM, one of those lovely Core 2 processor's and a far better graphics card. As a result it performs 20% better than the Evesham in our 2D tests and is over twice as fast in our gaming benchmarks.

The main feature

The 250GB hard disk in the Axis isn't huge by modern standards, but it's big enough. More exciting is the dual-tuner digital TV card. With this handy little device, you'll be able to watch one Freeview channel while recording another. As the AS4000 comes with Windows Media Center and a Media Center remote control, it's easy to record and watch TV, even from the other end of the room.

Rather than stick with the motherboard's onboard audio chip, Evesham has installed a Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic sound card. The X-Fi produces appreciably better sound quality than a soundchip built into your motherboard, but that's not the extent of its talents. Thanks to support for Creative's EAX, it's also capable of coaxing extra detail from game soundtracks, while the 24-bit Crystalizer function adds sparkle to poor music recordings, whether they're from CD or MP3.

Screen test

The 19in ViewSonic monitor displayed crisp, bright colours, but the viewing angles left a little to be desired. Viewed head-on it's not a bad monitor at all.

The Axis doesn't offer too much in the way of upgradeability. There are six high-speed USB2 ports for plugging peripherals in to, as well as a FireWire port. However, all the motherboard's PCI slots are filled bar a single PCI-Express 1x slot, which is free. Another concern is the 250W power supply - it may be beefy enough to power the modest processor, but it will be need upgrading if you install a high-end graphics card at some later date.

The Axis is a solid PC, but for the same price, you could get a PC with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor for better performance and superior upgradeability.