Evolution's GX8240 is a well-built system with a combo-motherboard designed with ISA, EISA and VL-Bus slots.

The single VL-Bus space is filled with a Weitek Power 9000-based Diamond Viper video card, a best-of-breed solution which turned in the fourth fastest performance in our Graphics WinMark test.

That's just about it for excitement, though - there's no P24T upgrade socket, the processor sockets isn't Pentium-aware, and performance is merely reasonable in all other tests - except for DOS Video, where it scored well below average.

Data Technology's EISA SCSI-2 controller pairs with a 242Mb Seagate disk drive to turn in average performance for the review group.  Memory is upgradeable with standard SIMMs, to a maximum of 32Mb on the motherboard, with a one 3.5in. drive bay containing a 3.5in. 1.44Mb floppy drive.  Inside the case, there's room for another two half-height devices.

The I/O ports, two serial ports (one 9-pin and one 25-pin), printer and games port are provided by a standard 16-bit multi-I/O card.  The video card is the Diamond Viper unit, handling non-interlaced video modes up to 1,280 by 1,024 in 256 colours with a 74Hz vertical refresh rate, and up to 16.7 million colours at 800 by 600 with a 72 Hz refresh rate.

The EIZO F340i-W monitor is well paired with the system and video card, coping with all but the highest video modes, but giving a rock-solid display in all modes up to 1,024 by 768.

Although not outstanding in our benchmark tests this machine works well, and is built to a high standard.