Eclipse Andromeda AP92n98GTX review

AMD’s new Phenom II X4 920 processor impressed us in last month’s components Labs, and we were surprised to see such a powerful processor in a PC that costs just £650.

Eclipse’s Andromeda AP92n98GTX was easily the fastest £650 PC here and was near the top of the table in all our benchmarks, speeding past many of the £800 PCs.

This was aided by the Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ graphics card. It sailed through our Call of Duty 4 test with more than 50fps. Although 23.4fps in our Crysis benchmark isn’t amazing, our demanding graphics settings are mainly responsible. Turn off anti-aliasing and the game becomes playable.

There’s plenty of room in the case for extra storage and peripherals, with six empty 3?in hard disk bays and three spare 5?in optical drive bays. The two PCI Express x1 slots are blocked by the graphics card, but the four PCI slots make up for their inaccessibility.

Annoyingly, the cables and connectors are glued in place to prevent them becoming dislodged in transit. Although well-intentioned, this makes upgrading tricky as you have to scrape off the glue before you can remove and add components. The first component you’ll want to upgrade is the rear case fan, which makes an annoying high-pitched sound. Without it, the system would be quiet.

A more significant problem is the monitor. Hannspree’s 19in XM-S New York is smaller than most monitors in this category, and has a lower resolution of 1,440×900 compared with the 1,680×1,050 pixels of the 20in and 22in monitors here. Its industrial black and silver design is distinctive, and its image quality isn’t bad. Images look very bright, but this makes photos look oversaturated.

If you can live with the monitor and you don’t mind replacing a fan, the Andromeda AP92n98GTX is a great PC for games. Otherwise, Mesh’s Matrix II 920 Nero is a better choice thanks to its superior monitor.