Evesham Inspection I
Evesham Technology Axis 64 3200+It clear that two PC that are priced at identical levels will share common components. Whilst the MESH PC has, seemingly, been geared up towards gaming, Evesham Technology's AXIS 64 3200+ has been designed to fit into what we can loosely call a true multimedia system. It's a case of two industry heavyweights, with bagfuls of awards between them, differing on design thinking. Let's take a closer look at the specifications and see where the two differ.
| System name | Evesham Axis 64 3200+ |
| Price | £1276 excluding VAT (£1500 including VAT). £34 + VAT delivery charge |
| Case | Evesham custom with FSP 300w PSU |
| CPU | AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2GHz) |
| Motherboard | MSI K8T Neo (MS-6702 v1.0) |
| Memory | 1GB Hynix PC3200 CL3 (2 x 512MB) - 1 slot free |
| Hard drive(s) | 1 x 160GB Maxtor 6Y160M0 8MB cache SATA |
| Optical drive #1 | LG GSA-4040B Multiformat DVD-ReWriter |
| Optical drive #2 | Sony DDU1612 16x DVD-ROM |
| Graphics card | ATI Radeon 9800SE All In Wonder 128MB |
| Sound card | Creative Audigy 2 |
| Speakers | Creative P580 Inspire 5.1 |
| Modem | Hayes PCI Software modem |
| Monitor | Viewsonic 17" VP171s (16ms) |
| Keyboard & Mouse | Microsoft Wireless (both keyboard and mouse) |
| Software (Main) | Windows XP Home, |
| Warranty | 3 years - 2 years on-site, 3rd year RTB |
| Other notables | Onboard Gigabit LAN, excellent multimedia capabilities |
Evesham, too, has decided that the best value in the power sector is to be had with AMD's Athlon 64 3200+ CPU. Nearly everything that was spoken about MESH's CPU choice and its justification is applicable here. The Athlon 64 3200+ is fast, fast, and, er, fast. Evesham could just as easily opted for a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 Northwood CPU, too, but it reckons AMD's Clawhammer is at least as good; we tend to agree.
Think of ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte for a second. All three companies are tier-one manufacturers with boards, often multiple ones, based on any particular chipset. Each knows how to make a chipset work in the real world. They're collectively big not because you or I happen to buy one at our favourite e-tailer, they're big because firms like Evesham and MESH buy them by the thousand. Whilst we have not formally reviewed the supplied MSI K8T Neo, going by previous experiences of MSI boards in general, we can presume that it is stable, rich in features and able to match or get close to benchmarks laid down by a class-leading board. Like the ASUS K8V Deluxe, it sports 3 DIMM slots, 5 PCI slots, Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire, lots of USB 2.0 ports, and discrete SATA (the same Promise controller, incidentally). The BIOS and layout is good, no doubt helped by Evesham's excellent build quality.
The first real departure between the two is in total memory provided. Evesham still goes for a two-DIMM population, but it decides to bump up the total to 1GB (2 x 512 Hynix PC3200 CL3 modules). Is 1GB really necessary for the intended uses of the machine ?. Probably not, but, as always, it's nice to have more, and the present price of DRAM helps. Evesham scores an extra point here.
However, like many things, you give with one hand and take away with the other. Evesham's use of a single 160GB Maxtor 8MB cache SATA drive, on the face of it, looks decent enough. We'd like to see 200GB at this pricing level, preferably something like MESH's 2 x 120GB, although not in RAID. The DVD-ROM drive is identical to the MESH's. Evesham felt, of course, that it had to add DVD Re-Writing ability to the AXIS. That's accomplished by the versatile LG GSA-4040B, which boasts up to 4x DVD-R and DVD+R writing speeds. There's also 2.4x DVD+RW, 2x DVD-RW, 24x CD-R, 16x CDRW, and 3x DVD-RAM writing. The last one is a curious one and gives the LG a higher spec. than MESH's Sony burner. Go here if you really want to gorge on the LG's numbers.
It's no surprise that HEXUS has reviewed many of the components found in these systems. Both use quality, branded items that are available in retail form. One of these, the Radeon 9800SE AIW, has been making the news as an excellent midrange card with significant multimedia capabilities. Ryszard was suitably impressed with the Hercules' version, review here, that it warranted praise even if it didn't soft-mod. It performs like a Radeon 9600XT and yet delivers so much more. Kudos to Evesham for spotting its potential and including it here.
Sound-wise, it's decent but not breathtaking. Evesham opts for the slightly inferior Audigy 2 soundcard. It doesn't have the ZS's 7.1 output (6.1 here, so no great shakes), doesn't quite match the ZS' 108dBa signal-to-noise ratio, or, for that matter, support DTS Extended Surround. Think of the ZS as the vanilla Audigy 2 with bells and whistles tacked on. That still makes the incumbent a good card in most respects. No 7.1 support allows Evesham to skip the Inpsire 7.1-7100s and go for the cheaper 5.1 P580s. They encompass a subwoofer, two fronts, centre, and two rear speakers. The Inspire 6.1 6700s would have been a more suitable choice. We'll speak of its performance in a couple of pages' time. The speaker / sound setup feels weaker than MESH's for the obvious reasons.
The TFT, too, deserves a mention in isolation, suffice to say that it's rather good. Earlier we alluded to our belief that devices which you interact with on a daily basis need to be of the utmost quality. Evesham goes with a Microsoft Wireless combination of its popular multimedia keyboard and mouse. The keyboard's action is similar to the Logitech's, that is, it isn't the absolute smoothest around but it should last a while. The mouse is usual Microsoft fare; rugged with a smooth movement.
A decent mix of components that veers towards the multimedia side slightly more than MESH's. We can nitpick at some of the choices, but there's nothing in this lineup that would cause undue concern.
