Hi-Grade D1000

After Intel bust the 1Ghz budget processor barrier last month, AMD has quickly followed suit, releasing its 1Ghz Duron. Hi-Grade has shown it off magnificently, and for under £800.

The Morgan core is a derivative of the new Palomino Athlon core, which is due to be released shortly. It has a new 3D Now! Professional instruction set, which includes support for Intel's SSE found on its Pentium III processors.

AMD has introduced data pre-fetching into the processor, and claims that the Morgan core is up to 20 per cent more efficient at processing data than the previous Spitfire Durons. A thermal diode works with compatible motherboards and BIOS to protect the Duron from overheating. If the chip gets too hot, the diode will trip an audible warning. If it gets hotter still, the machine will be shut down to prevent permanent damage.

Speaking of which, AMD claims that the processor is 15 to 20 per cent cooler than the previous version.

The same amount of cache is present - 128Kb of Level 1 and 64Kb of Level 2. As before, there will only be 200Mhz front-side bus (FSB) versions available. If you want a 266Mhz FSB version, you'll have to go for an Athlon.

If you're looking to upgrade, the story is that you might be able to keep your existing motherboard, or you might not. It's all down to the motherboard manufacturer and the voltage regulator it uses. Version 1.04 of the Asus A7V133-C in this system, for example, wouldn't work. You need version 1.05 or above.

There's a single 256Mb stick of PC133 SDRam inside, and why not, considering the low price of memory at the moment? Two Dimm slots remain free for expansion.

Storage is well catered for, first with a Maxtor 40Gb UltraDMA100 hard drive, spinning at 7200rpm. The optical drive is on the slow side, considering the 24-speed drives currently available, as it is an 8x 8x 32x, but costs have to be cut somewhere. Hitachi's 16-speed DVD drive is a welcome extra, particularly in conjunction with the Dolby Digital sound set up.

The Kyro II is a superb value graphics chipset, giving surprisingly good performance for the money. This 32Mb model is VideoLogic's Vivid! XS. The 3DMark 2001 score at 1280 x 1024 in 32bit colour was 1862, which may seem quite low, but that is to be expected from a Duron system.

Quake III gave a 37.3 frame rate running at 1280 x 1024 and a 32bit colour depth: enough for today's games but for a totally smooth experience you'll want to run things at a lower resolution.

LG's 775FT is excellent for the price, although it is a shame that the 795FT could not have been included, with the fantastic touch-sensitive OSD.

There are four USB ports in all, and three PCI slots are free for future expansion. An internal Allied Data PCI 56K V.90 modem takes up one of them, and has a handy telephone line pass through too.

The SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 has an excellent reputation, which is thoroughly deserved, so its inclusion here is welcome. The speakers are Creative's 5.1 Cambridge SoundWorks DTT2200 speakers, which work particularly well with the Live! 5.1 sound card, creating an immersive gaming experience and decent Dolby Digital reproduction when viewing DVD films.

The keyboard and mouse are a Logitech cordless pair. The keyboard is very comfortable to use, but the mouse has an odd ambidextrous design that feels slightly awkward, regardless of whether you're right of left handed. The system comes with a one year on-site, next working day warranty. There's also a copy of Lotus SmartSuite, and McAfee AntiVirus.

In terms of overall system performance, we expected to see some significant improvements over the previous core, given the fuss that AMD is making about the Morgan Durons. The system couldn't beat the latest 1.1Ghz Celeron from Intel, however, despite its 200Mhz FSB and sizeable cache.

Running Windows Me, the system scored 91 in SYSmark 2001. It is, however, £100 cheaper than the Celeron set up and, with an excellent graphics card and a surround-sound set up, this is a great bundle.

Contact: Hi-Grade
0800 074 0403
www.higrade.com.