HP Pavilion a250e (Athlon XP 2.16 GHz review: HP Pavilion a250e (Athlon XP 2.16 GHz

HP's Pavilion a250e is a midrange desktop designed for home and student users who want a wide range of features and capable performance. It boasts an updated appearance that will befit any desktop locale, plus a wealth of features that make it as versatile as its visage suggests. With a 4X DVD-recordable drive, a front-mounted media-card reader, and Nvidia's GeForce FX 5600 graphics card, the Pavilion a250e will appeal to digital-video enthusiasts, shutterbugs, and casual gamers. Topping off this impressive, sub-$1,600 package is an excellent, 17-inch flat-panel display. Although its application performance was a bit disappointing for a system based on an Athlon XP 3000+ processor, the a250e is still an awesome contender in its class.

"="" --="">/sc/30477610-2-200-DT3.gif" width="200" height="150" border="0" /> The interior gives you room to grow, though you'll have to work around some cables if you plan to fill all three PCI slots.

"="" --="">/sc/30477610-2-200-DT4.gif" width="200" height="150" border="0" /> Drive expansion is limited to one open 3.5-inch bay.

Getting inside the box means unscrewing two captured thumbscrews and sliding away the side panel. Look inside to find a tool-free interior, as well as clasps for removing the Pavilion a250e's front cover to add and remove front-available drives. The interior is relatively tidy, although cabling blocks one of the two free PCI slots. Just one additional 3.5-inch bay is free for future expansion. If you plan to edit lots of video, you might want to add a second hard drive yourself or upgrade the system's 80GB drive to something larger.

	"="" --="">/sc/30477610-2-200-DT1.gif" width="200" height="150" border="0" /> The default configuration is a DVD-ROM and a CD-RW drive, but our test system included CD-ROM and DVD+RW drives.

The Pavilion a250e's 2.167GHz Athlon XP 3000+ processor on an Nforce-2 chipset, 512MB of DDR memory running at 300MHz, and Nvidia GeForce FX 5600 graphics card all mean you'll get respectable, if not record-setting, performance. In our hands-on tests, our video-editing dabbling went well, and games played smoothly.

But it's the peripherals that set this midrange box apart from the competition. For starters, the 17-inch HP f1703 flat-panel display is larger than most LCDs that are offered with systems in this price class, and it looked great, with sharp text and fairly vibrant colors. Similarly, the 4X DVD+RW drive is faster than we expected for the price, and it burned our sample DVD without a hitch. Surprisingly, HP couples the DVD burner with a plain CD-ROM drive. We would have preferred a CD-RW, especially because the DVD drive burns CD-Rs at a relatively poky 16X.

"="" --="">/sc/30477610-2-200-DT5.gif" width="200" height="150" border="0" /> The HP f1703 flat panel matches the new Pavilion case and gives you a large, sharp display.

"="" --="">/sc/30477610-2-200-DT6.gif" width="200" height="150" border="0" /> You'll want to reprogram the shortcut keys along the top of the keyboard unless you need immediate access to HP's various trial offers.

The Pavilion a250e's accessories have their shortcomings. The multimedia keyboard and the optical mouse work fine, but the many multimedia keys that linked us to HP partners was more annoying than convenient. Thankfully, you can reprogram them. The two-piece Harman Kardon speaker set sounded dull and muddied. HP offers several 2.1 and 5.1 options, and we recommend upgrading.

At its core, the software bundle is useful, serving up Corel's WordPerfect 10.0; a suite of ArcSoft photo and video software; and Sonic Solution's RecordNow, a CD-RW app. But you'll also be forced to contend with a ridiculous amount of bloatware: from free trials to trial offers to HP-partner links, the desktop is brimming with useless and unnecessary desktop icons.

Application performance
Using an AMD Athlon XP 3000+ with 512MB of 333MHz DDR SDRAM, the HP Pavilion a250e performed slightly below average for a midrange system. During our anecdotal testing, however, the Pavilion a250e's performance was perfectly acceptable when handling various office tasks. Applications and menus loaded quickly, and it handled a fair amount of multitasking with aplomb.

Application performance  (Longer bars indicate better performance) BAPCo SysMark2002 rating    SysMark2002 Internet content creation    SysMark2002 office productivity

Gateway 500XL (2.6GHz Intel P4, 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz) 280  397  197  Falcon Northwest FragBox (2.66GHz Intel P4, 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz) 266  362  195  Sony VAIO PCV-RS320 (2.6GHz Intel P4, 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz) 264  374  186  HP d325 business desktop (2.17GHz AMD Athlon XP 3000+, 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz) 250  326  192  HP Pavilion a250e (2.17GHz AMD Athlon XP 3000+, 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz) 240  320  180

To measure application performance, CNET Labs uses BAPCo's SysMark2002, an industry-standard benchmark. Using off-the-shelf applications, SysMark measures a desktop's performance using office-productivity applications (such as Microsoft Office and McAfee VirusScan) and Internet-content-creation applications (such as Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Dreamweaver).

3D graphics and gaming performance
Our HP Pavilion a250e test system featured an upgraded graphics card. With Nvidia's new midrange 128MB GeForce FX 5600 (a $140 option), the system turned in strong 3D graphics scores for this class of PC, edging out the Gateway 500X, which had ATI's midrange Radeon 9600 card, on both of our 3D graphics benchmarks. The GeForce FX 5600 is a significant step up from the previous generation's card, and it should be able to run most of today's games and those of the near future.

3D graphics performance  (Longer bars indicate better performance) Futuremark's 3DMark 2001 Second Edition Build 330 (16-bit color)    Futuremark's 3DMark 2001 Second Edition Build 330 (32-bit color)

Falcon Northwest FragBox (Nvidia GeForce FX 5600 Ultra) 12,386  12,174  HP Pavilion a250e (Nvidia GeForce FX 5600) 10,884  10,497  Gateway 500XL (ATI Radeon 9600) 9,948  9,279  HP d325 business desktop (Nvidia GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8X) 6,225  4,978  Sony VAIO PCV-RS320 (Intel 865G) 3,111  2,696

To measure 3D graphics performance, CNET Labs uses Futuremark's 3DMark2001 Pro Second Edition, Build 330. We use 3DMark to measure a desktop's performance with the DirectX 8 (DX8) interface at both 16- and 32-bit color settings at a resolution of 1,024x768. A system that does not have DX8 hardware support will typically generate a lower score than one that has DX8 hardware support.

3D graphics performance in fps  (Longer bars indicate better performance) Quake III Arena

Falcon Northwest FragBox (Nvidia GeForce FX 5600 Ultra) 246.0  HP Pavilion a250e (Nvidia GeForce FX 5600) 223.1  Gateway 500XL (ATI Radeon 9600) 178.5  HP d325 business desktop (Nvidia GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8X) 105.0  Sony VAIO PCV-RS320 (Intel 865G) 41.0

To measure 3D gaming performance, CNET Labs uses Quake III Arena. Although Quake III is an older game, it is still widely used as an industry-standard tool. Quake III does not require DX8 hardware support--as 3DMark2001 does--and is therefore an excellent means of comparing the performance of low- to high-end graphics subsystems. Quake III performance is reported in frames per second (fps).

Find out more about how we test desktop systems.

System configurations:

Falcon Northwest FragBox
Windows XP Home; 2.66GHz Intel P4; Intel 845G/GL chipset; 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; Nvidia GeForce FX 5600 Ultra 128MB; IBM IC35L090AVV207 82GB 7,200rpm

Gateway 500XL
Windows XP Home; 2.6GHz Intel P4; Intel 865G chipset; 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; ATI Radeon 9600 128MB; Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB 7,200rpm

HP d325 business desktop
Windows XP Professional; 2.17GHz AMD Athlon XP 3000+; Nvidia Nforce-2; 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; Nvidia GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8X 64MB; Maxtor 6Y0160L0 160GB 7,200rpm

HP Pavilion a250e
Windows XP Home; 2.17GHz AMD Athlon XP 3000+; Nvidia Nforce-2; 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; Nvidia GeForce FX 5600 128MB; Seagate ST380011A 80GB 7,200rpm

Sony VAIO PCV-RS320
Windows XP Home; 2.6GHz Intel P4; Intel 865G chipset; 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; integrated Intel 865G 64MB (shared memory); Seagate ST3120022A 120GB 7,200rpm

HP's service-and-support options are acceptable. While archcompetitor Dell offers a year's warranty and onsite service, plus lifetime tech support, HP's standard one-year warranty does not include onsite service, and tech-support lasts for only the length of the warranty. Two- and three-year plans are also available. If you buy the system retail, you can take it back to the store for service. HP also offers an end-user parts-replacement program. The system itself ships with a PC recovery tool, and PC Doctor--a hardware troubleshooter. Although not system-specific, documentation is comprehensive, as is online support.