Review Although clock speeds go up with increasing regularity, if you need more power than current processors can supply the only option is to use more than one in the same PC. Symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) set-ups usually involve dual configurations, although more processors can be catered for. Using two slower processors rather than one fast, expensive chip can also be a cheap way of improving performance.

However, the performance of an SMP set-up isn't as good as that of a similarly-rated single-chip machine. Furthermore, to gain any advantage from an SMP set-up, the operating system and software must be multi-processor aware. This means Windows NT or 2000, and applications designed to run in a multi-processor environment.

That gives the Best Price the second-highest WorldBench score we've seen so far. If you need that extra boost of power, then the results are promising. The down side is that if you want this level of power, you'll have to pay for it. ®

Info

Price: £1899.00
Contact: 0870 220 0444
Website: www.poweroid.com

Specs

Processor type: Dual AMD Athlon
Processor speed: 1.3GHz each
RAM: 256MB DDR
Hard disk: IBM
Hard disk capacity: 2x30GB
Modem: 56Kbps
Monitor: Iiyama Vision Master Pro 451
Screen size: 19in
Max resolution: 1920x1440
Graphics card: MSI GeForce3 DDR
Warranty: Five-year return to base

Scoring

Build quality: 8
Features: 8
Performance: 9

All details correct at time of publication.

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