Reviewed on October 31, 2008The HP Pavilion a6620f makes a decent case for its budget price. We like the design and the built-in digital-audio ports, and if you're on an unbreakable budget, the a6620f will get you through a variety of processes, but we recommend saving up for a system that will give you a more powerful set of components for a negligible price difference.TAGS:HP Pavilion, digital audio, HP, portable hard drive, slot, port, PCI, Dell Inspiron, Ethernet, 64-bit, hard drive, Intel, graphics chip, DVD burner, adapter, DVD
Reviewed on October 14, 2008Falcon Northwest's high-end, preconfigured FragBox 2 leans on a pair of top-of-the-line ATI 3D cards to achieve some of the fastest 3D scores we've seen. You might rightly wait for Intel's new CPUs to ship before making a pricey PC purchase, but if you buy this system now, you'll be treated to a superfast little desktop.TAGS:Intel Core 2 Extreme, Intel Core 2 Duo, Radeon, Intel, 32-bit, video card, 64-bit, Microsoft Windows Vista, CPU, Microsoft Windows
Reviewed on October 16, 2008On certain tests, Dell's off-the-shelf Inspiron 530s comes out ahead of its slim-tower competition, but its situational performance edge isn't dramatic enough to overcome its underwhelming features. You can find cheaper systems that might be a tick slower on certain tasks, but on balance they'll let you do more.TAGS:Acer Aspire, Dell Inspiron, Acer Inc., HP Pavilion SlimLine, eMachines Inc., HDMI, graphics chip, 64-bit, Ethernet, Intel, HP, PC, games, video