Systemax 900Mhz Duron PC

The 900Mhz Duron features in two machines this month: the D900RV Value 0650 and the Axis 900D, evesham.com's entry for the group test. The latter uses an Asus A7M266 DDR motherboard along with 128Mb of PC1600 DDR memory, so it's interesting to compare the machines' SYSmark 2000 results.

The Value 0650 achieved a score of 145, whereas the Axis 900D reached 156. That's about an eight per cent increase in performance, which in real computing terms isn't great.

The Value 0650's Duron sits in a Biostar M7VKB motherboard, along with a single 128Mb stick of PC133 memory, occupying one of the three Dimm slots. The board boasts VIA's 686B southbridge chip, which offers full UltraDMA100 support to the 30Gb Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 60 hard drive.

There are also composite and S-Video ports, ideal for video editing and DVD viewing.

Situated in the AGP slot is AOpen's PA256MX graphics card. This uses nVidia's GeForce2 MX chipset and 32Mb of video memory to power the system to a respectable 2070 3DMarks and 32fps in Quake III.

There's a fairly flimsy 12-speed CTX DVDRom drive sitting in the top 5.25in bay, while the eight-speed read and four-speed rewrite Philips PCRW804 CD-RW below that caters for backups or CD-to-CD copying.

The four dedicated PCI slots, one PCI/ISA slot and an independent AMR cover expansion, with only a standard 56K V.90 Conexant modem filling a PCI slot. Audio comes from VIA's onboard solution and is piped to an average set of Creative SBS52 stereo speakers.

The system also boasts a Logitech Internet keyboard, a Logitech wheel mouse and LG's Flatron 775FT monitor. Finally, a copy of Lotus SmartSuite Millennium and a one-year return-to-base warranty complete this well-priced PC.

Contact: Systemax
08707 297 366
www.systemaxpc.co.uk.