Advent 3815 BTO

Advent's 3815 BTO includes a 2.66GHz Pentium 4 processor in a well-specified system for under £1,300. This ultra-fast chip sits on an Asus P4B533-M motherboard and comes with a 512MB stick of DDR memory, leaving one Dimm slot free.

The exceptional clock speed inevitably means that system performance is high, with a Sysmark score of 239.

A Maxtor 80GB hard disk is plenty, even though we often see more from £1,300 systems. You get a 40-speed CD-RW and 16-speed DVD drive.

The 3815 BTO comes with an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro graphics card. The 9000 Pro is a very good-value DirectX 8 compliant model, and this particular chip gave us a very healthy 3Dmark score of 7,501.

This is a little lower than we would normally see from a system in this price range but. considering the immense cost of Pentium 4 chips, even fitting this card into a £1,300 PC is pretty impressive. Again in its defence Jedi Knight II frame rates were excellent, at 91 frames per second (fps).

The Samsung 19in monitor is not the best in its size bracket, but is still reasonably clear and bright, with a 1,600 x 1,200 max resolution. Both the Audigy sound card and Videologic ZXR-500 speakers are excellent. There's a total of six USB ports at the back.

However, the cost of the P4 chip is the PC's downfall, as it means that less money is available for components, some of which are below the standard we'd expect from a £1,300 PC.

The puzzlingly low Sysmark score was also a disappointment. Nevertheless, this is pretty good value.

Price: £1,299 (£1,105.53 ex VAT)

Specifications:
2.66GHz Pentium 4 processor
512MB of DDR memory
80GB hard disk
40x CD-RW and 16x DVD drives
ATI Radeon 9000 Pro graphics card
Audigy sound card
Videologic ZXR500 speakers
Windows XP Home Edition

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