Product Reviews

You can't accuse AMD of resting on its laurels; just one month after our first look at the new Athlon XP processor, it's come out with the next speed advance - a processor clocked at 1.6GHz and rated at 1900+. Cynics might think that AMD just wants to hit that magical 2000 number before Christmas with its new rating system, but in the meantime, evesham.com has put together a 1900+ PC, fresh after its Axis 1800+ Ti5 (see Reviews, issue 86, p148) sailed on to our A List last issue.

It's difficult to say whether AMD's new performance ratings are exactly comparable to the Thunderbird core, and the scores in our own 2D benchmarks suggest they're not quite as high as they would have been. However, they still put AMD a long way in front of Intel's equivalent Pentium 4, and the 1900+ takes this even further. The Evesham's overall score of 5.57 is incredible and, with 512Mb of PC2100 DDR SDRAM on board, it also managed to produce a phenomenal 8.04 in our 2D graphics benchmark, so this PC will make light work of memory-intensive graphics applications like Photoshop.

The graphics are handled by an Nvidia GeForce3 Ti 500 graphics card, and this, in conjunction with the Athlon XP's SSE and 3DNow! Professional instruction sets, produced some stunning 3D results. Running 3DMark2001 at our standard test resolution of 1,024 x 768 in 32-bit colour, it returned our highest score yet of 7,690.

The Axis 1800+ Ti5 broke new ground by offering a 17in DVI-connected Samsung TFT monitor, but this month evesham.com has gone one step further and bundled LG's new 18in Flatron LCD 882LE. This is certainly a step up from the Samsung: it offers more screen area and the image quality

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is incredible, without any noticeable light and dark patches. Also, the transparent OSD means you can view the whole screen while making your adjustments. This monitor may bump the overall price up, but it's well worth the extra money.

One minor downside to TFTs is that their pixel-perfect image can appear too sharp, and often jagged, which makes it look less realistic. But with Windows XP Home supplied, just enable ClearType in the Display Properties and your fonts will look as smooth as they do on a CRT.

Evesham.com hasn't cut corners on other features either. A 16-speed Samsung DVD-ROM handles optical storage, while a BURN-Proof Mirai CD-RW that will write CDs at up to 24-speed provides high-speed removable storage requirements. An 80Gb Maxtor hard disk serves as an enormous block of permanent storage that should see through the life of the machine. What's more, you can also add more drives later, with both internal and external 3.5in bays for the taking and an additional 5.25in front-opening bay left vacant.

With the 512Mb of DDR SDRAM supplied on two DIMMs, there's still one socket free on the Asus A7V266 motherboard should you ever need to add more memory. There are also three more PCI slots vacant for future upgrading, as well as an ACR riser slot, which evesham.com has rightly seen as redundant with the current specifications and used its backplate space with the gameport riser from the Sound Blaster Audigy.

Couple the Audigy with the supplied Creative DTT2200 speaker set and you've got an excellent surround-sound system. It also has the bonus of an SB1394 port, which can be used to hook up DV devices. Meanwhile, a SmartLink V.90 modem rounds off the internal peripherals.

It's been a struggle to find anything wrong with this PC, especially as evesham.com has even forked out for a decent Logitech keyboard and mouse. There's no doubt that you could find a similarly specified CRT-based system for less money, but the 18in LG Flatron LCD 882LE TFT is worth the extra cost. Evesham.com has come up trumps with the Axis 1900+ Ti5, combining the fastest performance in every area with a full-on feature set, a great monitor and a three-year warranty with the first two years on-site - well worth your £1,799 plus £34 for delivery.