Review: Evesham Solar Plus Core 2 Duo PC

If you've read our other Core 2 Duo/Extreme PC reviews and found the price tags a little prohibitive, Evesham's Solar Plus might be more up your street.

At £1,399, it's a complete system that includes one of Intel's new processors and a 19in TFT monitor.

Evesham has opted for the slightly slower Core 2 Duo E6700 processor and, unlike with Chillblast's Fusion Hardcore Crossfire system, left the clock speed at the standard 2.67GHz.

If you want to find out more about the new range of Intel processors, take a look at our Core 2 Duo/Extreme review. A total of 1GB of DDR2 800MHz Ram supports the Core 2 Duo processor.

The graphics setup consists of a single Nvidia Geforce 7900GT with 256MB of Ram. It's by no means a slow card, but considering the raw power of the Core 2 Duo it does create a bottleneck when it comes to gaming.

In our 3Dmark05 benchmark, the Solar Plus achieved a score of 7,559, which means it will have no trouble running the latest games, but frame rates will suffer if detail levels aren't scaled down at high resolutions.

Images are displayed on a Viewsonic VX922 TFT – a 19in model with an impressive 2ms response time. As with all 19in TFTs, it has a native resolution of 1,280x1,024.

Had this been an SLI or Crossfire system, this would have created another bottleneck, but since just a single 7900GT card is used it's unlikely you'll want to play games in resolutions higher than this.

Should you decide to upgrade the graphics, you'll also want to consider moving up to a 20in panel.

In Sysmark 2004 SE, the Solar Plus raced to a score of 333. Although this is a long way off the 424 achieved by Chillblast's Fusion Hardcore Crossfire system, it's still a tremendously impressive score.

Don't forget, Chillblast's overclocked monster will set you back about £700 extra - and you don't even get a monitor.

Microsoft Media Center Edition 2005 comes as standard, but with no TV tuner included you won't be able to put it to full use. But at least Microsoft will be able to add any sales of this Evesham to its Media Center usage statistics.

With the Solar Plus, Evesham has clearly tried to create a relatively low-cost Core 2 Duo PC, and with the whole system coming in at under £1,400 it certainly achieves this aim.

If you're not a hardened gamer and have no need for super-fast graphics, the single Nvidia 7900GT card won't concern you.

However, if you have visions of upgrading the graphics at a later stage you'll also need to consider splashing out on a larger monitor.

Related reviews
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A super-fast PC with decent components supporting the Core 2 Extreme processor

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