Product Reviews

With all the hype surrounding the recent launch of Intel's Pentium 4 you'd be forgiven for thinking the Celeron no longer existed. In fact, Celeron sales continue to be strong, despite AMD's Duron continually out-performing it in our benchmarks. This is due to the lack of availability of a competing value platform, such as 810e, for Duron. However, with the launch of equivalent integrated chipsets such as VIA's KM-133, Intel can no longer afford to ignore the Celeron's lacklustre performance. To address this, Intel has increased the 800MHz Celeron's front side bus speed from 66MHz to 100MHz. This reduces the bottleneck between the CPU and the rest of the system, and will hopefully improve system performance along the way.

The Mesh Elite 800C is the first PC we've seen to house this new and improved Intel chip. However, even with the Celeron's changes the benchmark results are nothing to get excited about. The overall 2D PC Pro benchmark score of 1.96 indicates that despite the improvements to the bus speed, Celeron still isn't in the same league as Duron at the same clock speed. And as a reply to Intel's challenge, AMD has simply upped the ante by releasing an 850MHz Duron, as seen in the Evesham Axis 850 (reviewed p130) which clocked up a much more impressive overall benchmark score of 2.59.

The component mix is reasonable enough though. An Asus V7100 GeForce2 MX graphics card takes care of the graphics business, and puts in an impressive performance despite its 32Mb of RAM being SDR (Single Data Rate). Running 3DMark2000 in 1,024 x 768 in 32-bit colour depth, the Elite 800C turned out a score of 2,998 which, while not exceptional, is enough to make ease of 3D applications. The S-Video and composite outputs also make it flexible.

For the moment, the 17in Philips 107e monitor makes reasonable use of the VGA output, providing a decent picture with good sharpness and geometry. However, the slight

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curvature of the screen will be apparent to those who've been using on aperture-grille flat screens.

Mesh's latest case is smart in both design and appearance. The tower is reassuringly sturdy, and I was impressed by the ease with which the side panel could be removed to allow access to the interior. Those concerned about security will appreciate the lock and key present at the rear of the PC. Once inside, I was particularly impressed by the arrangement of the hard disk bays. These are side mounted and, by pressing a lever, swiftly come away from the chassis. This ease of access will bring relief to IT staff and home upgraders. There's also a 3.5in internal bay free, one 5.25in bay, but sadly no more front-opening 3.5in bays.

Mesh has housed the Intel CPU in a VIA-based Gigabyte GA-6VAX7-4X motherboard, with the VIA Apollo Pro 133a chipset looking after the flow of system data. A reasonable 128Mb of PC133 SDRAM has been included, which with Windows ME should be fine for the majority of tasks. Should there be a need to upgrade, there are two free DIMM slots.

I was disappointed by the size of the IBM hard disk, which at 19.1Gb after formatting is less capacious than might be expected, especially with Systemax supplying a 46.1Gb drive in its £799 A1000RV Value 0440 (reviewed p135). The rotational speed of 5,400rpm is inevitably also a bar to greater performance.

Further storage is possible, however, via the TEAC CD-RW. This is a good inclusion in a PC at this price but I wasn't blown away by the speed ratings - it writes at only quad-speed. The Pioneer DVD-ROM is fine, however, allowing DVDs to be read at up to 16-speed while CDs can be spun up to 40-speed.

The multimedia side of things is well catered for with a Sound Blaster Live! audio making a welcome appearance. The surround-sound capabilities of this card would be wasted without a set of Creative's FPS1000 four-point surround speakers. And, while it's by no means a hi-fi-quality set, it certainly adds to the multimedia experience. A standard Conexant V.90 modem occupies a PCI slot, leaving three of the five free for use, with an unoccupied ISA slot at the bottom too.

Software comes in the guise of Microsoft Works Suite 2000, so as a plain workstation this system will do fine. Despite its disappointing performance, the Mesh Elite 800C is worth considering for its easy-access case design, decent components, and one-year on-site warranty. However, you can certainly get more power for the same money elsewhere.