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Eclipse Fusion A925R575 review

Eclipse Fusion A925R575
Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £700
inc VAT

A 24in monitor, fast graphics card and the latest storage technologies edge this PC ahead of the competition, but the short warranty is a touch disappointing

Specifications

2.8GHz AMD Phenom II X4 925, 4GB RAM, 24in 1,920×1,080 display, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

With a 24in monitor and a powerful graphics card capable of playing Crysis, the Eclipse Fusion A925R575 should appeal to gamers that want to play the latest 3D titles. A quad-core AMD processor gives it enough power to chew through most applications as well, and there’s also plenty of expansion potential, as it’s one of the first PCs we’ve seen with both USB3 and SATA III support.

There are plenty of free drive bays and four free SATA III ports. Current mechanical hard disks aren’t fast enough to take full advantage of SATA III, but you could upgrade to a solid-state disk (SSD). The 4GB of RAM takes up two slots, leaving two more free for an easy upgrade to 8GB. A rare PCI-E x4 slot is free along with two PCI slots and a second PCI-E x16 graphics card slot.

On the outside, there are two USB3 ports, but with eight USB2 ports available you can keep these free for fast external drives. There’s also an optical S/PDIF output to complement the analogue 5.1 outputs, and audio can also be sent via the graphics card’s HDMI output to a compatible AV amplifier.

A 24in Hanns.G HH241DPB is a welcome step up from the 22in monitors we tend to see at this price, and the extra screen space is worth having. Some people find that a 22in screen with a 1,920×1,080 resolution makes text too small, whereas on the HH241DPB it looks just right. Image quality was good, and although colours weren’t as vibrant as some this is partly due to the screen’s matt finish, which reduces the glare from reflections.

Results from our benchmarks showed the Fusion’s AMD processor neck-and-neck with our reference CPU overall, although it scored slightly better in the image-editing and multi-tasking tests. At 2.8GHz, it’s not as fast as some £700 PCs, but the four cores make up for the lack of raw horsepower.

More impressive was the ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics card, which managed 62.4fps in Call of Duty 4 and a playable 30fps in Crysis, making the Fusion ideal for gaming. It will also speed up some applications, such as the latest Photoshop, that support GPU acceleration, and there’s plenty of room for photos and video on the 640GB hard disk.

The one weakness is the paltry one-year RTB warranty – we’d expect longer at this price – but otherwise the Fusion A925R575 is superb value, and wins a Best Buy award.

Basic Specifications

Rating *****
Processor AMD Phenom II X4 925
Processor external bus 200MHz (2GHz HyperTransport)
Processor multiplier x14
Processor clock speed 2.8GHz
Processor socket AM3
Level 1 cache 4x 128KB
Level 2 cache 4x 512KB
Memory 4
Memory type DDR3
Maximum memory 16GB
Motherboard Asus M4A87TD/USB3
Motherboard chipset AMD 870

Ports

USB2 ports (front/rear) 2/6
Firewire ports (front/rear) 0/0
eSATA ports (front/rear) 0/0
Wired network ports 1x 10/100/1000
Wireless networking support none
Other ports 2x USB 3.0

Internal Expansion

Case midi tower
PCI-E x1 slots (free) 1 (1)
PCI-E x16 slots (free) 1 (1)
Free Serial ATA ports 4
Free memory slots 2
Free 3.5in drive bays 4

Hard Disk

Hard disk model(s) Western Digital Caviar Black (WD6402AAEX)
Interface SATA 600
Total storage capacity 640GB
Spindle speed 7,200rpm

Graphics

Graphics card(s) ATI Radeon HD 5750
Graphics/video ports VGA, DVI, HDMI

Sound

Sound VIA HD Audio
Sound outputs 5.1 line out, optical S/PDIF out
Speakers none

Removable Drives

3.5in floppy drive no
Supported memory cards none
Optical drive model TSSTcorp SH-S223C
Optical drive type(s) DVD+/-RW +/-DL

Display

Viewable size 24 in
Screen model Hanns.G HH241DPB
Native resolution 1,920×1,080
Response time 5ms
Screen inputs VGA, DVI

Other Hardware

Modem No
Keyboard Microsoft Basic Keyboard 1.0A
Mouse Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical

Software

Software included none
Operating system Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Operating system restore option Windows disc

Buying Information

Warranty one year RTB
Price £700
Details www.eclipse-computers.com

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