Labs

PC Nextday's Zoostorm has the best 3D graphics card in the group and is fast in Windows, too. It comes with a printer, wireless networking and a large hard disk, but only 512MB of memory and no onsite warranty.

FEATURES

The Zoostorm has lots of connectivity options, including four FireWire ports, Gigabit Ethernet and wireless networking. It is one of only two PCs in the group that have two optical drives, and it has a large 250GB hard disk. The PC itself

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has no onsite warranty, although the monitor and printer are covered by their manufacturers.

PC Nextday has decided to pair the Zoostorm with an AOC LM728 17" monitor. It is sharp but produces a disappointingly bluish white. It performed acceptably in our greyscale transition test, but some banding was visible.

An HP PSC 1410 multifunction peripheral is also included. This outputs pin-sharp black text, albeit at a rather ponderous rate, and its scanner is impressive. Unfortunately, its printing costs can be quite high as it accepts only low-capacity ink cartridges. It received two stars in our What's New review in Shopper October 2005.

PERFORMANCE

The Zoostorm is equipped with the fastest single-core processor in this group, a 2.4GHz AMD Athlon 64 3800+. Although it has only 512MB of RAM, the Zoostorm still scored a decent 118 in our application benchmarks.

The 128MB GeForce 6800XT graphics card is the best in this group. It managed 46fps in our Doom 3 test and should keep most 3D games fans satisfied for some time.