Labs

There was stiff competition in this group, with quad-core and overclocked processors making other systems faster. Only one thing seems to differentiate the PC Nextday on paper: SLI - nVidia's dual graphics system, which boosts gaming performance. Or at least should. You can see that the 3D performance of this PC was actually slightly less than other PCs using only one of the two cards fitted in the PC Nextday. So why is this machine our overall winner?

Let's address the gaming performance glitch first. The slightly lower score achieved by the two GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB cards is down to poor Windows Vista drivers from nVidia; we know our test game (Call of Duty 2) responds well to SLI under Windows XP, so the fact that it runs slower with SLI enabled under Vista merely suggests that nVidia hasn't got the hang of making Vista drivers yet. That will change, and in the meantime you could go into the driver program and disable SLI until nVidia releases a significant driver update.

Future proof

Hang on, didn't we criticise the General from Very PC for underperforming and rubbish the idea that you should pay now for the promise of extra performance later? Indeed we did, but in the case of the General the promise was of a mere 30% extra, which still wouldn't have brought the two ATi Radeon HD 2600 XT cards to the level of even a single GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB. Here, we already have something near parity with most of the other PCs, with the knowledge that SLI can bring 60 to 80% extra performance (depending on the game). That's going to mean serious gains as nVidia improves its Vista SLI driver, which, given the need for nVidia to do so in order to save face, should start happening soon. Of all

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the PCs, this is the one that stands the best chance of running Crysis at the screen's 1,680 x 1,050 pixels.

The PC Nextday also delivered better all-round 2D performance than most, with its Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 being another speed bump faster than the E6750s used elsewhere. Only the Cyberpower's overclocked E6750 achieved a higher score, while the quad-core chip in the Mesh is faster only in certain applications. The raw computational power is backed up with 2GB of RAM, pretty much what we'd recommend at the moment. It'd only be worth adding a pair of 512MB modules in the future, as PC Nextday has sensibly used the friendlier 32-bit version of Vista Home Premium rather than the restrictive 64-bit version (which enables more RAM) installed by Very PC.

Pleasing peripherals

The subtle two-tone colour scheme of the fascia came as a pleasant surprise after the brashness of some PCs on test. The PC Nextday logo on the door is attractively done, and the case feels hardy and solid. There's a 500GB hard disk, as with the other PCs on test, so plenty of storage there, while the audio chip on the motherboard is adequate for the Philips MMS460 5.1 surround sound speakers. They're not exceptional, but they're certainly a step up from some of the speakers offered.

That's fortunate, as they have to compete with what is quite a noisy PC. The culprit here is the non-standard processor cooler, which constantly screams because its fan is always running at maximum speed. Most coolers adjust their speed depending on the temperature of the processor.

Apart from being faster than most of its rivals in general 2D tasks and promising the same or better gaming performance, it's the screen that really sets the PC Nextday apart. The AOC 210S 22-inch TFT gave a really bright and vibrant image that set off our games, photos and videos a treat. We barely had to fiddle with the settings, and running the screen at maximum brightness for the most vibrant colours still gave a rich and solid black, and thus an excellent overall image quality. Viewing angles were generous, with only slight colour inversion creeping in when viewing from extreme vertical positions.

That fan aside, it's hard to fault the Zoostorm, and how often do you get to buy a PC that'll get faster as time goes on?