Consumer Reviews

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.

PROS: My 6 year old Pentium 4 pc at 2.5Ghz was too slow to edit my new HD video footage so I upgraded to this new HP quad processor and the HD footage is now smooth and I have no problem multitasking by surfing the web, burning a dvd, and editing an HD home video. The pc never used more than 2gigs RAM even though it has 6gigs RAM. I love the standby button that Compaq and HP pcs have always had so it’s always a quick 1-second to turn on and 1 second to turn off.

The keyboard lights up when the pc’s awake and turns off when the pc’s on standby.

Windows 7 is awesome.

This pc has the AMD quad chip instead of the Pentium chip (which would cost about $50-$60 more) but because it can render HD video with ease, I can spend the $50 savings toward a nice dinner or a wireless keyboard/mouse.

CONS: I wish the standby button was a separate button instead of having to hold down a FUNCTION key and the F2 key at the same time. Because the included Windows 7 is 64-bit instead of 32-bit, I had to download the 64-bit drivers for my HP Laserjet 3030 and Laserjet 2600n printers.

No old format PCI expansion slot so if you want to make it wireless, you’re better off buying a $30 USB wifi adapter. Also, no old serial or parallel ports.

Impressive Value! … Though the 2.6 GHz Athlon II 620 Quad-Core with 2.6 GHz, 2MB L2 Cache may not be the fastest Processor one can buy at this price level, a second look at the rest of the components this desktop sports will justify the purchase and the enterprise.

With this configuration, You can tell that I am neither a gamer nor a Hollywood film editor; hence a lightning fast firing processor was not what I was after. But my typical work session would include sending and receiving email, uploading, editing and processing photos in Photoshop, downloading movies and watching them and occasionally using Skype while surfing the net all at the same breath!

Such seemingly mundane tasks, while appearing innocuous enough, exact a heavy toll on the processing core of the chip; so a lightning fast dual core only would behave like a clueless blond cheerleader with two left feet; on the turf, she memorizes her routine well, but on the dance floor, she is a klutz who can’t chew gum and synchronize her dance movements with her partner at the same time!

Enter Quad Core processing power 2.6 GHz; though not the extreme speed that you may want if you are a gamer, it has a superb capability for multi-tasking with ease and agility; and that is where this powerhouse comes in handy; enough speed for most if not almost all applications, and enough multi-tasking processing power for four fraught applications simultaneously with ease and without klutzy performance or staggering interlapping allocation of processing power.

The NVIDIA GeForce 9100 Graphics Card is another extra component that adds to the performance as oppose an integrated graphics card as is the custom in this price range.

All in all, this machine is very well designed, capable and indeed better for the typical workstation gal than almost anything else out there within $100 price range, give or take.