Upgrade to an AM2 Athlon 64 system now

This early Nforce 570 for Intel board lacks luxuries and speed compared to Intel chipsets, but boasts a good price.

Packed with extras to target some of Vista’s interesting new features, but it isn’t quite the marvel we were hoping for.

With CrossFire performance more erratic than SLI, and NVIDIA outgunning ATI with its Shader Model 3 cards, it's hard to recommend this board.

Despite the improved specifications, the Q1-SSD is anything but mobile computing nirvana.

Cheap to buy and run, the X5470 is great for mono printing, but less so for photos and images.

Custom design watercooling and some judicious overclocking make for a showstopping performance and price.

While HP’s strength in photo printing is once again proved, mono prints take too long and the scanner is poor.

Luxurious extras and design make this a highly desirable machine. It’s ideal if space is at a premium at home.

Capable of reproducing good photos, but it’s slow, a bit expensive to run and has a poor scanner.

The best convertible tablet we’ve seen great performance and great design at a decent price.

A high-quality panel, but it lacks the finishing touches to make it a winner.

Speedy and adequately functional for light use, the UX27– though not perfect – is the best UMPC yet.

Despite some welcome additions and good components, this Acer notebook is left wanting.

In marketing terms, bigger is better, leadingHP to use a 6.2-megapixel CCD in the newR717. That sounds superior to its predecessor,the R707, but pixel count is largely academicover 4 megapixels unless you want A3 size.

Not great value for money, but the XPS 700 offers plenty of power and striking looks.

Potentially Much faster than a X1900 XTX in games with large textures yet it costs the same. At over $100 less than Nvidia’s 7950 GX2, it’s a fine card.

A great-quality widescreen panel for a surprisingly low price.

A good display that’s fine for office use and any work that needs the resolution, but it isn’t a contender for the A-List.

Offering bags of gaming power for an attractive price, the GeForce 8600 series is an enticing prospect.