Emagens offering was the fastest PC overall this month. Its Gigabyte GA-7VRXP motherboard and Athlon XP 2000+ CPU are both stellar performers that can give most Intel systems a run for their money.

Its also loaded with features: four USB 2.0 ports, onboard Ethernet, ATA/133 support (although curiously the included disk was only using ATA/100, despite support for ATA/133) and a PCI 56K modem. Its speakers leave a little to be desired, however, and any serious media junkie will definitely want to upgrade.

The overall construction of the Emagen is of decent quality, with a pleasant-looking case and a tidy interior. There are one or two minor design issues the power button and blue plastic on the front of the case are both a little flimsy but otherwise
we were impressed.

One of the systems many highlights is its excellent 64MB Triplex GeForce4 Ti4200. This card has been coupled with faster DDR SDRAM than most other Ti4200s on the market. This allows it to run 50MHz faster than other cards of this type, and the benchmarks really show up the difference. This Essentia cleaned up when it came to 3D testing, pulling ahead of all the other machines (even a Pentium 4 sporting a Ti4400) with a clear 10% lead. Its also fairly competitive when it comes to more general benchmarks, and while its Athlon XP CPU cant quite match the Pentium 4s in multimedia crunching, it scored equal second highest for general office use.

The Emagen is one of two machines that came with a Samsung 753 DFX 17in Flat monitor. Its one of the best CRTs of the bunch, and certainly beats the 17in curved monitors that many of the other systems ship with.

Its Microsoft Optical mouse and Diamond Touch keyboard are also pretty decent peripherals strictly functional but pleasant to use none-the-less.

This is a very well-rounded system, with the ability to handle just about anything you can throw at it.