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Skip Navigation LinksPC Authority > Group Tests > Stocking stuffers

Stocking stuffers

by Staff Writers  on Dec 1, 2000
Tags: Stocking | stuffers
The Labs team always likes a good Christmas PC roundup. It gives us a chance to down the callipers, and off the lab coats for a short time, and really experience the fun side of PC technology. And thi
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The Labs team always likes a good Christmas PC roundup. It gives us a chance to down the callipers, and off the lab coats for a short time, and really experience the fun side of PC technology. And this Labs kept us occupied for quite some time.

We began by inviting a host of Australia's top PC manufactures to submit a system that they thought would make a perfect addition to roast turkey and cracker-jacks on a Christmas day - and we received quite a few surprises. A price cap was set at $3,000, which is a little above the average price of a consumer system, but is still affordable for most. A $3,000 price cap also forces the PC manufacturer to make a decision: will they emphasise performance and stick in a top-notch CPU at the expense of features, or will they pack in as many bits and pieces as possible at the expense of performance?

The result is an interesting spread of systems, based on a variety of processors, and with a broad range of features. Some have obviously targeted either raw performance or gone the option of stuffing the box full of every peripheral available, while others have attempted to strike a balance between these two extremes. Interestingly, while we have systems based on both the Intel Pentium III and AMD Athlon Thunderbird, we have no systems this month that feature the more budget-oriented processors, the Intel Celeron or AMD Duron.

We tested all the systems using the standard PC Authority Benchmark suite, as well as 3DMark2000 Pro and Quake III Arena, using the rigorous PC Authority Benchmark demo. 3D was especially emphasised in our testing regime, since these days it is expected that the home user will be doing far more with their PC than just a little word processing and Internet browsing. 3D games have dramatically increased in popularity over the last few years, whether it be fragging your buddies online with Quake III, taking a McLaren around the streets of a virtual Monaco, or building a siege army to raid your neighbour's castle. For this reason we have factored the two 3D tests quite heavily into the overall results.

Technical Editor Tim Dean
Labs Assistant Ashok Zaman
Contributors David Hollingworth
This article appeared in the December, 2000 issue of PC Authority.


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