With so many available, PCs have to try and stand out from the crowd. Whether it's sheer power, components or value, something has to turn heads.

The Advent 3974SP's key attraction is its GeForce4 graphics card. The GeForce 4 is the latest in nVidia's rapidly expanding family of graphics chips. Confusingly, GeForce4 products aren't necessarily better than those using GeForce3. To understand why, it's important to be familiar with nVidia's current line-up.

Sitting at the top of the GeForce4 range are the Ti 4400 and 4600 chips, with the MX 460, 440 and 420 models bringing up the rear. These MX-prefixed GeForce4 chips are, at least on a technical level, successors to nVidia's GeForce2 MX models. The upshot is that 'old' GeForce3 cards can outperform brand-new GeForce4 MX models. Don't blame us.

The Advent 3974SP features an MX 440, which is some way down the pecking order. Nevertheless, it scored 5447 in our Labs 3DMark 2001 test, placing it within touching distance of a low-end GeForce3.

It gains a lot of performance from the Athlon XP 2000+ processor (which runs at 1.67GHz) and makes an excellent team with the 512MB of RAM. The system as a whole clocked a commendable 185 in our SYSmark 2001 test.

The rest of the PC has enough bells and whistles to keep most people happy. The enormous 80Gb hard drive is backed up by a high-speed CD-RW and a DVD-ROM drive, which can make the most of the graphics card's TV-out connector.

Inside, everything is neat and tidy, and outside the usual ports are joined by a FireWire connection.

As you would expect with a top processor and so much other gubbins, the price is high, and that is what lets this PC down. The graphics card may be new, but it is not the best, and for this price you can expect the best.

Specifications

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