Graphics cards have been getting cheaper over the past few years, or at least graphics performance has.

The kind of results you can get from a £180 graphics card are hugely impressive and raise the question of whether it’s worth spending any more than that (it is still possible to spend £400 on a card alone) when the cheaper one is fit for purpose.

The Mesh G92 Pulse Pro is based around just such a card - the Nvidia Geforce 8800GT - with 512MB of memory. Around 18 months ago, we’d have expected a computer that scored 17,584 in our 3Dmark05 benchmark test to cost more than £1,500, but the G92 costs just half that, at £799.

It comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 processor, which has two cores running at a blistering 3GHz, and 2GB of DDR2 memory (there are two free slots remaining on the motherboard).

The setup uses a 1,333MHz FSB (front-side bus), which is one of the fastest in the industry, and the computer’s PCmark05 score of 8,250 indicates strong performance for the price. It’s remarkably nondescript for all that - the case is quite plain, even verging on the ugly, but it’s well designed in that three of the four 5.25in drive bays are kept free (the top one is occupied by the multiformat Lightscribe DVD drive).

There are no external 3.5in bays free since the two in the case are occupied by a memory card reader and a header containing two USB ports, a Firewire socket and headphone and microphone connections. There are two internal 3.5in hard disk bays free though, with the other one taken by the 500GB disk. Both the hard disk and the optical drive use Sata connectors, meaning the two standard IDE sockets on the motherboard remain free, as do two of the four Sata sockets.

The aforementioned graphics card sits in the only occupied expansion slot, and if you do find it’s lagging (perhaps you need more than the 493 frames per second we got out of it on Fear at 1,024x768) then it’s possible to drop another one in to make use of SLI technology. There’s plenty of room in that section of the motherboard since cabling is very tidy throughout the case so the two spare PCI sockets are unblocked.

One puzzling aspect was the absence of the easy-open case sides we often see with Mesh PCs; instead you need to remove a pair of screws to get inside. This is a minor qualm, but it’s a strange decision on a PC that’s designed with internal expansion in mind.

You get four more USB ports on the back of the case, along with another Firewire connection, and the usual assortment of other sockets, including an E-Sata port.

Our review unit came with a large and bright GNR-branded 22in widescreen monitor. Mesh tells us this will soon change to a similar 22in Mirai monitor (pictured), which may be a good thing since we found the GNR not as sharp as we normally like. However, it’s perfectly usable and the Geforce 8800GT will have no problem playing all DirectX 9 games at its native resolution of 1,650x1,080. DirectX 10 games with lower quality settings will also be playable.

This setup is completed by a Logitech 2.1 speaker set, a 550W power supply, Windows Vista Home Premium, Microsoft Works 8.5 and a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse.

The one-year on-site warranty (covering mainland UK) and extras don’t amount to much, but when the bones of the computer are so good - it’s fast and powerful, with plenty of potential - we’re not complaining.