Evesham Evolution 2.8GHz

Another day another clock speed. As we draw ever nearer to 3GHz worth of processing power (due before the end of the year), it's hard to imagine why people actually need this much.

Besides world domination and a few party tricks to impress your friends, we're hard pushed to think of more than a couple of uses; video and audio editing being the most obvious.

The Evesham Evolution 2.8 is about the fastest, most fully featured PC anyone could wish for. But over £1,900 is a hefty price to pay these days, regardless of how stunning a PC is.

As is suggested by its name, this PC houses a 2.8GHz Pentium 4. Costing over $700 (£467) a go, the 2.8GHz Pentium 4 is incredibly fast, although looking at the Sysmark scores, there's little to tell it apart from its 2.5GHz and 2.6GHz brothers.

An overall score of 259 is an improvement, but the margin between all three is very slight, so there's not much in it to really justify the extra cost.

It does run 133 million Hertz faster than the 2.66GHz, and therefore in theory is faster, but we can only assume that the programs in Sysmark are unable to take full advantage of this extra speed.

The rest of the components supplied are the highest of high end - any less and the PC simply couldn't warrant its price tag.

The Geforce4 Ti4600 comes from Winfast, and gave us the highest 3Dmark score we have ever seen, at 11,736. Frame rates in Jedi Knight II were particularly high too. The card also comes with DVI and S-Video outputs.

LG's 915FT+ is one of the best monitors around. The image is crystal clear, the on-screen display is excellent, and there's a USB hub around the back.

For sound, Evesham has chosen Creative's Audigy Player card - here partnered by a set of Inspire 5300 surround sound speakers. While this card lacks the features of its bigger, Platinum-monikered brothers it's a good-quality product, and it keeps the system's price as low as can be.

Two 256MB sticks of DDR SD-Ram occupy all but one of the Dimm slots on the Asus P4B533-V motherboard. This comes with four USB ports, positioned at the back; Evesham's compact yet feature-filled case gives two more at the front.

A three-port Firewire card takes up one of the five PCI slots. Two other slots are filled, one by the sound card and the other by a 56K modem.

The 100GB Western Digital hard disk is obviously huge, but considering the cost of the system overall, and the fact that both video and audio editing require vast storage spaces, we would have hoped for more.

That said, you could always use the supplied DVD burner if you needed extra storage space. One of the disadvantages of having a DVD burner is that CD burning times are slow when compared to traditional CD-RW drives. The other optical drive is a Samsung DVD reader.

Besides Windows XP Home, Evesham has supplied Pinnacle's Studio 7; an excellent, entry-level video editing package. There's also Giga Studio and some DVD authoring software.

Considering what's inside this PC, it's well priced and there's very little to complain about. But video editors willing to spend such a sum on a new PC may want to think twice: Geforce cards are not designed for 2D editing, focusing more on gaming, and Pinnacle Studio is only a basic video-editing package.

Those wishing for an introduction into video editing really won't need this much power. Video editing pros, however, should really marry this processor up with Matrox's RT.X100, and then you'd really be onto a winner.

Specifications:

• 2.8GHz Pentium 4
• Asus P4B533-V motherboard
• 512MB of PC2100 DDR memory
• 100GB hard disk
• 16x DVD
• Pioneer DVD-R
• Geforce4 Ti4600 graphics
• LG 915+ monitor
• Creative Audigy Player sound card
• Creative Inspire 5300 speakers
• Logitech cordless keyboard and mouse
• 56K modem
• Three-port Firewire card
• Windows XP Home
• Pinnacle Studio 7
• VOB DVD-R authoring
• Giga Studio
• 2yr on-site, 1yr RTB warranty.

Price: £1,937.58 (£1,649 ex VAT)

Contact: Evesham 0870 160 9500
www.evesham.com