Systemax Inspire 4012 review

There's only one thing that most people need to know about the Athlon 64: it's fast.

Very, very fast. (Inquisitive types wanting to know why should see Athlon 64 Unmasked, above.) The thing is, the first Athlon 64 PCs came with a price tag that was as hefty as they were powerful. At £1,500 a pop, they were well out of the average person's reach.

Well, there's good news! Thanks to the release of AMD's cheaper, Athlon 64 3000+ chip, these super-fast systems are available for the kind of price the rest of us can afford. On-the-ball manufacturers like Mesh and Systemax can now dip below £1,000 without making compromises. We look at two of the latest systems to see how they fared.

VIDEO, GAMES AND DVD

Systemax has built its machine around the ever-impressive ATI All-in-Wonder 9800SE graphics card. This is one of the most versatile cards you'll ever see, with enough oomph to cope with the latest games while packing in a TV tuner. Not only can you watch TV on your PC, but you can also record programmes on to your hard disk. It even supports timeshifting, which means you can pause live TV to answer the phone, and then come back to the programme, press play and watch from the point you left off.

The All-in-Wonder is also ideal for editing video. The card can import video from a non-digital camcorder, and there's a FireWire port to plug a digital one into. You also get a bundle of programs to turn raw material into something worth watching. Systemax's choice of Sony's latest DVD writer means you're able to write both DVD+R and DVD-R discs within ten minutes.

The Mesh Matrix can also create DVDs, but as it stands it provides no way to hook up a conventional camcorder. Its DVD writer is also a little slower at writing DVD+R/RW discs. Those few extra minutes are unlikely to matter - and it's more than made up for by the inclusion of the flexible video-editing program Pinnacle Studio 8 SE.

For gaming, the Systemax appears to beat the Mesh hands-down. The Inspire scores 15,139 in 3DMark 2001SE, compared with the Mesh's 13,712. This test measures a system's 3D gaming performance, so the Systemax will be slightly better than the Mesh at rendering the lush 3D graphics of the latest games. The Inspire also comes with a CRT monitor, rather than a TFT flat panel. TFTs have had problems displaying the quick-moving action found in games. Accordingly, most gamers preferred CRTs, despite their bulkiness. In addition, the Mesh has a wireless keyboard and mouse - something gamers used to be suspicious of, due to the lag between pressing a button and the PC responding.

Don't be deceived by first impressions. Reaction times on TFTs have improved enormously, and the Mesh's Viewsonic model is no exception. We played a game of Unreal Tournament 2003 on both systems, and found both monitors equally responsive. Similarly, there's no longer a time lag on good-quality wireless mice and keyboards.

If you're a gaming fanatic then the Systemax's extra 3DMark points will be worth the sacrifice of a thin monitor and wireless peripherals. For everyone else, the Mesh will do just fine. If you intend to watch lots of DVD movies on your PC, though, the better viewing angles of the Systemax's CRT monitor win out.

SIGHT AND SOUND

The Mesh fights back in everyday use. Not only is its ViewSonic TFT brighter and sharper than the CTX monitor provided by Systemax, it's also easier to read at its standard resolution of 1280x1024. It goes to show how misleading specs can be: a 19in CRT monitor sounds bigger than a 17in TFT. But because the image doesn't go right to the edge, it translates to around 17 inches of viewable picture. We found that the CTX was only comfortable at the lower resolution of 1152 x 864.