Packard Bell iPower 6800 SLI

Whoever designed the Packard Bell iPower 6800 SLI had obviously heard of the phrase 'two heads are better than one', as several parts of this computer are doubled up to improve performance.

At the heart of this desktop PC is an AMD Athlon 64 3700+ processor, with 2Gb of memory which is more than ample for any home computing task. There are also two hard disks that give an impressive total of 500Gb of space. These can be linked together which should theoretically mean better performance.

Our test machine, however, hadn't taken advantage of this so, even though its test results were excellent, it should be able to perform even better. Packard Bell assures us that the iPower 6800 SLI will be sold using the linked configuration.

Like the hard disks, the two 256Mb nVidia 68000T graphics cards also benefit from being linked together. In this mode, each card only has to operate one half of a monitor. This means that each card only has to deal with half as much information as a normal graphics card, which means the computer gets twice as much power.

In real-world terms, it improves speed in 3D games and other graphic-dependent applications. Subsequently, the iPower6800 SLI achieved some of the highest 3D scores we've yet seen and will easily cope with all the latest games with all special effects switched on. And it certainly looked impressive on the Samsung 19in TFT that has a maximum screen resolution of 1280 x 1024.

On the flipside, all this graphics power means noisy fans and the space taken up by the two graphics cards means that there is no room for adding extra PCI components.

However, all the familiar connections are already integrated into the case, including four USB2 ports. There's also an analogue TV card installed that, with the right software, will allow television and radio to be recorded.

There's a DVD writer that will write to all plus and minus recordable DVDs, including double-layer, and another DVD drive for disc-to-disc copying. There are lots of connections on the front for attaching peripherals and a 12-in-1 memory card reader. The speakers are quite basic but the keyboard and mouse are both wireless.

This computer comes with a wide selection of software, such as Microsoft Works 7, CyberLink PowerCinema, Sonic My DVD LE, Norton Internet Security FE 2005 and two games that will really highlight the graphics performance of this system: Splinter Cell 11 and Far Cry.

As a nice touch, Packard Bell has also pre-installed the Skype internet telephony service with 20 minutes of free talk time included.

If you're an avid gamer or power freak, the iPower 6800 SLI offers great value for money and very impressive performance.

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