CCL DUO4400-CSP review

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Verdict:

This PC has a fast processor, large hard disk and dedicated graphics card. It's an impressive all-round PC system, and a bargain at this price.

Review Date: 10 Oct 2007

Price when reviewed: £400

Reviewed By: Seth Barton

Our Rating 5 stars out of 5

ExpertReviews Award

Review
Specs

CCL's DUO4400-CSP is one of only two budget PC systems here to come with a dedicated PCI-Express graphics card.

Features

The case is compact, but there's plenty of room inside. The motherboard has all the slots you need to add extra memory, expansion cards or more storage. A memory card reader makes it easy to transfer your digital photos to the hard disk. There's a large 320GB model fitted, which should take some time to fill. The PC is louder than most in the group, thanks to loud processor cooler and graphics card fans.

Its monitor is the only one here to rotate on its stand. It tilts more than most and can be set to two different heights. The display isn't as bright as the I-INC monitor supplied with Eclipse's and Gladiator's PCs, however. Colours were a little oversaturated, and there was a pink hue to the greyscale test.

The only speakers are those built into the monitor, but the PC comes with a decent Microsoft keyboard and mouse.

Performance

The Nvidia GeForce 8400GS graphics card isn't quick enough to play modern games at high detail settings. It managed only 7.3fps in our Call of Duty 2 test. To make it playable, we had to reduce the resolution to 800x600 and turn off anti-aliasing. It's not for dedicated gamers, although you could use it to play strategy games or older first-person shooters. The Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 processor helped it to an impressive overall score of 155 in our 2D benchmarks, second only to PC Nextday's Zoostorm. It's fast enough to take on most tasks, though an extra 1GB of RAM would be useful for video editing or running multiple applications.

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