PC Specialist Apollo Q9450 GTX

A few months ago we took a look at PC Specialist's Apollo Q6600 GT. That was a powerful and versatile gaming machine that managed to stay £1 under four-figures while still achieving benchmark results you'd expect from a far more expensive setup. This PC is an update to that model, but times move on, so we were keen to see if it could repeat the feat.

Visually, nothing much has been changed. The clean-lined but hulking case from the last Apollo remains, with its blue-LED-adorned, swing-door front.

The case provides a huge amount of space for additional drives, although just two SATA headers remain spare on the Asus P5ND motherboard. Nonetheless, this would allow the optical drive to remain in place even with another two hard disks added alongside the already-spacious 500GB Western Digital.

There's also potential to upgrade the huge 4GB of RAM, too, with two slots left beside the pair of 2GB chips. Thoughtfully, 64-bit Vista has been specified here, which can address more than this 4GB, making future upgrades a doddle.

While the 1,680 xx 1,050 resolution remains unchanged, the included 24in LG Flatron L246WH monitor is 2in larger in the diagonal than that which was shipped with the Q6600 and includes a two-port USB hub to add to the five on the PC itself. This screen has vibrant colours and relatively good contrast, although a certain amount of detail is lost at the brighter end of the spectrum. The PC includes a Blu-ray drive so that the panel's high-resolution can be used to the full.

The other peripherals are similarly capable, but not as high-end - a necessary compromise for the performance and price. A wireless Logitech keyboard is provided, along with a dock for a wireless, rechargeable mouse.

Both of these input devices are attractive and comfortable, although it is likely that those using the machine for gaming will want to replace them with something more robust and accurate.

In this new Apollo, both the processor and graphics card have been improved, too: the 2.4GHz Q6600 has been replaced with a speedier quad-core 2.6GHz Q9450, and the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT has been switched for a more powerful 9800 GTX. But it's not all good news, and some sacrifices have also been made: instead of two 500GB Western Digital hard disks you get only one, while the 5.1 speaker set has also been reduced to a 2.1 set.

The previous Apollo scored 1.45 in our benchmarks, which was - and is - an impressive figure for under £1,000. However, with the new faster processor the latest model manages a score of 1.86 for the same cost, romping past our A-listed high-end PC, the Mesh Elite Pulse HD and is far higher than we would expect for the price.

Its 3D scores are very good too, achieving a storming 33 frames per second in our Cryis benchmarks at High settings and 65fps at Medium settings. It can't quite match the results produced by the ATI HD 4870-based Cyberpower Gamer Ultra M2 Quad (our enthusiast PC of choice), but they're not at all far off.

It's clear from the performance results that this PC represents very good value for money. It may cut a few corners compared to its predecessor, but the savings have been passed on in performance, and there is nothing missing that will cause any issues. In fact, as an all-round gaming, work and media machine, the PC Specialist is a great choice, and one that won't break the bank either.

Author: Matthew Sparkes