Hi-Grade Ultis P4 C17 PW07

Intel has traditionally taken quite a beating when it comes to value, as its Pentium 4 chips, while remaining the fastest on the market, are a couple of hundred pounds more expensive than AMD's only slightly slower Athlon processors.

However, at the budget end, roles are reversed, as the Celeron has been outclassing its AMD rival, the Duron, pound for pound for many months. To do this, it has had to keep up with the times by, for example, breaking the gigahertz barrier and adopting 0.13micron technology.

Inside this Hi-Grade Celeron system is the all new, singing and dancing Celeron, based on Pentium 4 architecture and clocking in at an impressive 1.7GHz, over 300MHz faster than its Pentium III-based Celeron predecessor.

Costing just £56, the modified Willamette chip retains its Socket 478 configuration, but has been 'dumbed down' to have a 100MHz system clock, and the Level 2 cache has been slashed to just 128KB.

Aside from this, there seem to be very few differences from the original 1.7GHz P4. Higher clock speeds will be released in the coming months.

The chip is wrapped up in a 533MHz MSI DDR motherboard and, coupled with 256MB of PC2100 DDR memory, it gave a perfectly decent Sysmark score of 138 overall, with some particularly impressive scores coming from the internet content creation tests.

While these are not the highest scores we have seen from a sub-£800 system, this is the first time an Intel chip has offered such good value. Coupled with price cuts for 'normal' Pentium 4 chips, this means that Intel could easily win back the processor crown.

The system's innards have been neatly tied down, and there's plenty of space left to upgrade, including two spare Dimm memory slots, three PCI and two 5.25in bays. There are four USB ports, two at the front, two at the back, and the line-in and mic-out ports have been drafted over to the front as well.

The method by which this transfer has been achieved is sadly far from elegant: a large grey wire connects the external mini-jack ports of the motherboard to the rear, and blocks one of the PCI bays. However, the case does also allow you to do the same with a Firewire port, a real bonus for video editing junkies.

ATI's 8500LE chip gives sufficient 3D performance for gamers. The card also offers DVI and S-Video outputs. 3Dmark 2001 performance on this occasion was 5,484, and Quake III tests gave us 73.8 frames per second.

The monitor is LG's 775FT. While its big brother the 795FT, is a superior model, with a better looking fascia and a USB hub at the rear, the 775FT still offers excellent image quality and good looks.

Fitting into a £799 price bracket demands some sacrifices, and this time it's the sound chip. The onboard chip provides a very respectable 5.1 output, which could easily do justice to games or the occasional DVD. But its quality just does not compare to that of a separate sound card. However, old favourites, Creative's DTT2200 speakers, adequately supply 5.1 sound.

Back on the positive side, the storage drives are of a high standard. A Maxtor 7,200rpm hard drive gives you 60GB of space; a size that is rapidly becoming the norm. The CD-RW drive whirrs along at 24-speed, which is more than enough for most users.

While this is a particularly solid system, and excellent value, when held up against the £100 cheaper AMD-based Mesh system, it seems less palatable. Nevertheless, there are some pretty impressive components under the hood, and performance is excellent.

Price: £938.83 (£799 ex VAT)

Specifications:

• 1.7GHz Intel Celeron
• MSI motherboard with 533MHz 845E chipset
• 256MB of PC2100 DDR SD-Ram
• 60GB Maxtor hard drive
• ATI 8500LE graphics card
• 24x CD-RW
• 16x 40x DVD
• 56KB V.90 fax/modem
• Windows XP Home
• Microsoft Works 6
• Norton Anti-Virus
• One-year on-site warranty.

Contact: Hi-Grade 020 8532 6111
www.higrade.com