Why You Can Trust CNET HP Pavilion d4100 review: HP Pavilion d4100
The HP Pavilion d4100e won't dazzle you with fancy lights or a slick paint job, but it's more than capable of handling virtually any home multimedia project and most 3D gaming. Its roomy chassis and multiple expansion options will appeal to the DIY crowd.
The AMD-based HP Pavilion d4100e desktop resides near the top of the company's Pavilion line, but with a wide variety of configuration options, it can be easily tailored to different budgets and purposes. Prices start below $1,000; our $1,899 review unit came configured as a home multimedia system, featuring HP's LightScribe DVD burner, a hefty 400GB hard drive, and a 9-in-1 media-card reader. You'll have to pay more for a monitor and speakers or for high-end options such as a RAID hard drive setup, but the d4100e is a desktop workhorse that can grow with your needs.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The HP Pavilion d4100e's black-and-silver chassis provides ample access to interior components. Although the side panel and the drive bays are tool-free, you'll need a screwdriver to add and remove expansion cards. The proprietary HP motherboard, based on ATI's Radeon Xpress 200P chipset, has four available PCI slots and two vacant memory slots.
The front panel features a media-card reader, two USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, and audio-in, microphone, and headphone jacks, but the highlight is the double-layer LightScribe DVD-recordable drive. It lets you burn grayscale text, photos, and preformatted CD label art directly onto specially coated discs. Though we wish you could create a label in less than 20 minutes and do it in color, LightScribe is certainly a step up from a trusty Sharpie or any label printer we've come across.
There's a standard set of connections around back, including jacks for integrated 5.1 audio with digital audio out as well as composite and S-Video out. You'll also find four additional USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, and an Ethernet connection. Inside the case, there's room for two more hard drives, two additional 5.25-inch external drives, and one 3.5-inch external drive for adding a floppy or Zip drive. It all adds up to an impressive array of external and internal expansion options, but we were disappointed to see that HP doesn't include a bay that can accommodate its handy Personal Media Drive, which it lists as an option on the Pavilion d4100e. Unlike HP's Media Center m7070n Photosmart PC, which has an oval-shaped front-accessible bay for a Personal Media Drive, the Pavilion d4100e requires you to connect this external hard drive via USB 2.0.
The HP Pavilion d4100e uses an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ processor running at 2.4GHz, although other options on this AMD-only system range from the less expensive Athlon 64 3200+ to the top-of-the-line Athlon 64 X2 4400+ dual-core. If you want an Intel chip, you'll have to choose the similar d4100y Pavilion series. With 1GB of 400MHz DDR memory and an impressive 400GB, 7,200rpm SATA hard drive, the d4100e is well suited to editing and storing large multimedia projects. Power users can opt to create a RAID array with two 80GB or 160GB drives.
The HP Pavilion d4100e turned in respectable scores on CNET Labs' benchmarks. On BAPCo's SysMark 2004, the system kept pace with but didn't surpass the Falcon Northwest Talon SLI, even though the Talon uses a slightly slower Athlon 64 processor. Still, the system's score of 189 was right where we expected, equaling the performance of similar AMD-based and Intel-based configurations, including HP's own Intel-based HP Pavilion a1050y.
A 256MB PCI Express Nvidia GeForce FX 6800 card gives the system enough 3D power to satisfy all but the most demanding gamers and graphics enthusiasts, who would typically gravitate toward more expensive SLI-based rigs for extreme graphics performance. If you're not interested in gaming, you can save $220 by opting for the entry-level 128MB Radeon X300 SE.
At a resolution of 1,024x768 on our Half-Life 2 gaming test, the Pavilion d4100e rendered a very playable 70.6 frames per second (fps), a score that represents a statistical dead heat with the Falcon Northwest Talon SLI, a system with two graphics cards (albeit slightly lower-end GeForce 6600 GT cards to the Pavilion d4100e's GeForce FX 6800). Then again, the Pavilion d4100e trailed the iBuyPower Gamer SLI by 9 percent on the same test, and the Gamer SLI also uses two GeForce 6600 GT GPUs, albeit on a single 3D card. The performance delta widens a bit at a higher resolution, where SLI can begin to show its muscle, but the Pavilion d4100e will allow you to play today's most advanced games at a high resolution with the same features enabled.
The HP Pavilion d4100e ships with a multimedia keyboard and an optical mouse, both of the PS/2 variety. An extra $40 buys you a wireless keyboard and mouse, and another $99 will get you a TV-tuner card. Throw in a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS sound card ($65) for 7.1 support and high-resolution audio (24 bit/96KHz) playback and upgrade to Windows XP Media Center Edition ($35), and you've got yourself a powerful, albeit large, Media Center PC.
Bundled software is plentiful, and includes HP's Image Zone Plus photo-editing program, Microsoft's Works 8.0, Apple's iTunes, Sonic's RecordNow, Muvee's AutoProducer, Intuit's Quicken New User Edition 2005, and InterVideo's WinDVD Creator 2.0. Out-of-the-box documentation is limited to a quick setup poster, a generic Pavilion user guide (not model specific), and a recovery guide.
The HP Pavilion d4100e comes with a standard one-year parts-and-labor warranty that includes 24/7 toll-free telephone support. For an extra $99, you can extend the warranty to two years; for $149, you can bump it up to three. HP's Web site offers software and driver updates for your specific model, as well as troubleshooting and live chat with a service technician.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
 | BAPCo's SysMark 2004 rating | | SysMark 2004 Internet-content-creation rating | | SysMark 2004 office-productivity rating |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| Half-Life 2 1,024x768 4XAA 8XAF | | Half-Life 2 1,600x1,200 4XAA 8XAF |
Find out more about how we test desktop systems.
Systems configurations
Falcon Northwest Talon SLI
Windows XP Home SP2; 2.4GHz AMD Athlon 64 3500+; Nvidia Nforce-4 Ultra SLI chipset; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 256MB (2) Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT (PCIe, SLI); Seagate ST380817AS 80GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA
Gateway 7310S
Windows XP Home SP2; 3.4GHz Intel P4 550; Intel 915G chipset; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 128MB Nvidia GeForce 6600 G (PCIe); WDC WD2000JD-22HBB0 200GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA
HP Pavilion a1050y
Windows XP Home SP2; 3.6GHz Intel P4 560; Intel 915G chipset; 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT (PCIe); Samsung SP1614C 160GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA
HP Pavilion d4100e
Windows XP Home SP2; 2.4GHz AMD Athlon 64 4000+; ATI Radeon RS480 (ATI Radeon X200 Xpress) chipset; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce FX 6800 (PCIe); Seagate ST3400832AS 400GB 7,200rpm, Serial ATA
iBuyPower Gamer SLI
Windows XP Professional SP2; 2.4GHz AMD Athlon 64 4000+; Nvidia Nforce-4 Ultra SLI chipset; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT (PCIe, SLI, dual GPU); two WDC WD2500JD-98HBB0 250GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA; integrated Silicon SiI 3114 SoftRAID 5 controller