Intel must be just a little concerned that AMD's processors are making big inroads into the High Street table this month. There's even a 600MHz Athlon at the heart of Evesham's impressive top-spec PC. The Athlon TNT2 Ultra Pro comes with 128Mb of RAM, a 20Gb hard drive, a 6x DVD-ROM drive and a 32Mb Guillemot Xentor TNT2 graphics card. The price? A wallet-punishing £2,290.08.

If your budget is more modest there are bargains to be had, with all but the very cheapest PCs now coming with at least 400MHz processors and 64Mb of RAM. Good news for gamers too, as Tiny and Elonex up the ante and join the manufacturers who fit 32Mb graphics cards to their machines.

While CD-ROM drives aren't quite consigned to the computing graveyard, DVD-ROM drives are fast becoming the norm, even with High Street PCs like those from Tiny and Packard Bell. This month sees 6x drives hitting the High Street and 10x drives bundled with Evesham's PCs for the first time, so it shouldn't be too much longer before this kit comes as standard.