Product Reviews

You have to be impressed with what Evesham has managed to cram into this £765 PC: a dual-core Intel CPU, 2GB of RAM, a 300GB hard disk and a 22in widescreen TFT. And that's before we even consider Nvidia's brand-new DirectX 10 graphics card.

On the processor front, the Core 2 Duo E6400 runs at 2.13GHz and powers the Solar 8600GTS to a healthy 1.09 in our application benchmarks. And there are no problems with the memory-hungry Vista Home Premium edition either, as there's a generous 2GB of DDR2 RAM to play with.

But the main attraction here is the freshly unveiled GeForce 8600 GTS. With previous mid-range cards from Nvidia proving exceptionally good value, the 8600 GTS has a lot to live up to.

At the TFT's native 1,680 x 1,050 resolution, we saw playable frame rates in all our test games, although we did have to sacrifice anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering settings. Call of Duty 2 ran at 33fps, Far Cry at 41fps and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion at 40fps - unheard-of results for a mid-range card. Pre-release pricing for the card is around $229, so we're expecting that to be about £115.

It's impressive stuff, but there are compromises, with the Iiyama ProLite E2200WS screen - an analogue-only version of the monitor we've reviewed previously - being one of them. Despite its imposing screen size, the analogue D-SUB input results in a needless digital-to-analogue-to-digital signal conversion process. Image quality suffers as a result, and it also leaks light from around the edges of the screen at higher brightness settings. But it's the poor contrast range that's most annoying, with shadows and brightly lit areas losing significant detail. Given that the screen is what you spend most of your time looking at, it's a disappointing compromise.

Another potential problem is the power supply. Rated at only 350W, it only

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just complies with Nvidia's minimum requirements for the graphics card and could be a source of system instability. We didn't notice problems during testing, but you're on the limit of what it can deliver, and issues could arise if you decide to upgrade in the future. However, Evesham does back up its design choice with an excellent two-year on-site warranty, with a third year reverting to return-to-base cover. And if you're really concerned about the PSU, Evesham will upgrade it to a hefty 600W model for an extra £55.

There's a lot to like here then; the performance of the system is impressive given the price. And while the screen is one area of compromise, it's adequate for most uses. The power supply is an area of concern, but the upgrade is reasonably priced and gives great peace of mind, as does the excellent warranty. For the money, it's a seriously attractive system and well worth buying if you're looking to spend less than £800 on your next PC.

Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS

Given the high price of the flagship 8800 series, anyone with limited funds has been eagerly awaiting the 8600. At launch, there are two flavours: the higher-performing 8600 GTS and the 8600 GT.

Architecturally, both GPUs are the same. They're built with 289 million 80nm transistors and have 32 stream processors. These have even been improved from those of the 8800 series, addressing textures twice as fast for a clock-for-clock speed boost. Both GPUs should be accompanied by 256MB of RAM, although we expect variations almost immediately, and there's a 128-bit memory interface to keep data flowing between GPU and RAM.

The difference comes simply with the clocks at which the cards run. The GTS runs astonishingly fast, with the GT being more modest. In fact, the GTS runs faster than even the 8800 GTX chip: the stream processors thrash away at 1.45GHz, while the various subunits that feed this beast and process the results run at 675MHz, and its RAM is clocked at a stupendous 1GHz. The 8600 GT has 700MHz RAM by default, while the stream processors are clocked at 1.19GHz, with the rest of the chip running at 540MHz.

The GeForce 8600 GTS is a good performer and should cost around £115, while its lesser brother will cost £80. We delve deeper into the architecture and the performance of the two chips at www.pcpro.co.uk/news/110357.