Product Reviews

The Dimension 8300 stormed onto our A List when we first saw it. With incredible power and an amazingly low price, it lingered there for an impressive five months. Nothing stays still for long, though, and Holly's fantastic all-rounder, the KA-M3D eventually stole its crown. Now, with an updated spec, the Dimension 8300 is back in our labs.

One of the principal changes is a step up from the 3GHz Pentium 4 to the latest 3.2GHz version. You won't notice the difference in everyday use, and it means a big chunk comes out of the budget. The same goes for the hard disk setup. Two 36GB Western Digital Raptor 360s spinning at 10,000rpm are configured in a RAID-0 array. It's an incredibly fast arrangement, but their sheer cost limits the combined usable capacity to 65.1GB. Considering that modern games and applications often take upwards of 4GB, it doesn't allow much room for manoeuvre and it could leave you needing to buy an extra disk sooner than you'd like.

Nonetheless, these changes alone help boost the Dimension's score from a previous 1.70 to 1.79 in our benchmarks. It's a more than respectable speed, but performance junkies will find Athlon 64 systems more appealing. Take the Evesham Axis FX51P (see issue 110, p58), with its 2D score of 2.64 - you'll pay more for it, but it's significantly faster than even the speediest Pentium 4 systems available.

The faster CPU will also have an effect on the 8300's graphics, although few could complain when there's a 256MB Radeon 9800 XT graphics card on board. Scoring 18,474 in 3DMark2001 SE at 32-bit XGA, it isn't a meteoric rise over its predecessor's 9800 Pro, but it's still more than speedy enough to cope with games to be released in the foreseeable future.

The final part of the 8300's facelift comes in the form of a new 19in TFT. It's a great addition, with excellent performance in all areas save for intense gaming, where its response time simply isn't fast enough to cope with

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swift movements. We were satisfied with DVD playback, though, which showed minimal lag. It's brightly lit, benefiting from crisp definition, and displays a good colour balance too. Mounted on an impressively configurable stand, it offers a wide degree of height, tilt and swivel adjustment. It will also pivot into portrait mode, and there's a convenient four-port USB hub too.

The familiar Dell system case has both good and bad points. On the plus side, it offers largely tool-less access to drives, and PCI slots with plenty of room to work inside. It looks smart too - more funereal than festive, but it will fit into most environments. You'll need plenty of space if you plan to visit the insides of the machine, though, as the hinged tower needs to be laid on its side before you can gain access. There are plenty of trailing wires inside it, which also hamper work, and can even cause problems when trying to get it shut again.

PCI-based upgrades will be limited, with the only free slot perilously close to the graphic card's cooling fan. There are two free DIMM sockets to augment the two 256MB sticks of DDR PC3200 already installed, each of which is assigned to one of the 8300's two memory channels.

The CPU itself is passively cooled, assisted by a cowling to a 90mm case fan, with the result being much quieter than standard arrangements. The 9800 XT's cooling fan is somewhat louder, but it's still a reasonably discreet system.

On the other end of the scale, the Altec Lansing speakers will make plenty of noise. They've been downgraded from 5.1 to 4.1 since we last saw the system, but it isn't a huge loss. The mid and upper ranges are refreshingly clear, and the subwoofer delivers powerful yet controlled bass. In partnership with the Creative Labs Audigy 2 card, it's a capable system, offering 24-bit/96kHz operation, EAX support and the ability to handle 6.1 speaker systems.

All in all, though, the features offered by the 8300's upgrade are less appealing than the original. The RAID-0 array is great in theory, but it doesn't offer enough of a performance boost to compensate for the loss of capacity. The DVD writer is looking a little dated too, when most systems at this price come with at least dual-format support or a separate CD writer to deal with backup more speedily. At £1,456, the Dimension is left looking overpriced and under-featured. As such, it can't compete with the previously A-Listed Holly, which, for £1,400, boasts faster 2D performance, dual-format DVD writing and a host of extras.