I bought this PC with high hopes, but low expectations. I needed a replacement for my old Pentium 4 rig, but didn’t have a bunch of money to shell out at the moment. Typically I build my own machines, but even the parts I had picked out were more than I wanted to spend. Staples had this PC on sale for around $460 and after doing a lot of research on the AMD CPU and reading reviews I decided to give it a shot. I’m glad I did.
I work with very demanding graphic, 3D animation, and video editing software including Premiere, After Effects, 3D Studio MAX, etc. I also tend to work in two or three applications at a time. In my spare time I also enjoy playing video games. I bought GTA IV when it first came out and my old 3Ghz P4 couldn’t even begin to play it, even with a good video card, so I was hoping this machine would be capable of running that.
I knew before buying that the integrated graphics on this machine would never be capable of my demands, so I ordered a mid priced video card at the same time XFX PV-T98G-YDLU GF 9800GT 600M 512MB DDR3 DUAL DVI TV PCI Express Card, hoping a.) that it would fit in the tight confines of the case, and b.) that the stock 300 watt power supply would be enough to run everything and would have the necessary connectors.
I am happy to report that the video card fit fine, didn’t require an additional power connection, and ran fine with the stock power supply. The computer itself is extremely quiet, very fast, and a pleasure to work with. It runs all of my applications flawlessly and with very impressive speed, and GTA IV runs with very high settings. For the combined $570 or so spent, this is an extremely decent system.
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Tags: HP Pavilion Desktop PC, HP Pavilion P6210F, Windows 7 Home Premium