Eclipse Fusion SLI i6300-VSTA review

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Verdict:

You can't expect a perfect gaming PC for £600, but the Fusion SLI comes close. It performed surprisingly well in our 3D benchmarks. With its fast graphics card and hassle-free upgrade options, the Fusion is the best PC here for playing games. Its monitor looks old-fashioned, but it produces a good image. It's not as powerful as the PC Nextday PC, but this is a price worth paying for a decent display.

Review Date: 18 Apr 2007

Price when reviewed: £599

Reviewed By: Seth Barton

Our Rating 5 stars out of 5

ExpertReviews Award

Review
Specs

The Fusion's case looks bland except for a bright blue illuminated strip across the front.

It's spacious inside, with plenty of room for upgrades. The motherboard has two PCI Express x16 slots and supports SLI, so you could add a second graphics card to increase its 3D performance further.

A decent power supply unit (PSU) is essential for future upgrades. The Fusion comes with an impressive 450W PSU, which is sufficient to power two graphics cards.

The motherboard has optical and coaxial S/PDIF outputs, so you can connect it to a surround-sound amplifier or speakers. The only speakers are those built into the monitor. They won't suffice for gaming or listening to music.

Most new games have widescreen modes, so it's a pity Eclipse didn't include a widescreen monitor. The AMW model included looks ugly, but it doesn't have image-quality problems.

Performance

The Fusion's Nvidia GeForce 7900GS is a very powerful graphics card for a budget PC. It scored 36.2fps in our tough new Prey test and can run the latest games smoothly even at high detail levels.

With an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor inside, the Fusion scored a respectable 147 overall in our Shopper benchmarks. It'll speed through everyday tasks with ease and it won't shirk from tricky jobs such as video encoding.

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