Velocity Micro Edge E2250 review: Velocity Micro Edge E2250

The Velocity Micro Edge E2250 is a well-rounded $1,999 midrange performance PC. What it is not is the best gaming PC at this price, as much as its overclocked quad-core chip and SLI-capable motherboard want you to believe otherwise. The overclocked chip especially helps this system's multimedia performance, but its 3D gaming scores fall to those from less expensive systems. The Edge E2250 is certainly a respectable gaming PC, but don't buy it if you're looking to get the most for your gaming dollar. Instead, we recommend the Edge E2250 if you spend a lot of time converting media files and multitasking, or as a upgrade platform for gamers willing to spend a little bit more.

We awarded Dell's XPS 630 an Editors' Choice back in February, and that system remains the primary competition for Velocity Micro among $1,000-to-$2,000 desktops. The Dell is a configurable model sold online, while the Velocity Micro Edge E2250 is a fixed-configuration sold only at Best Buy.

You can reconfigure the Dell so that it matches the Edge E2250 more closely on price and features, but the XPS 630 can't keep up in a few areas. Instead of the Edge E2250's overclocked Core 2 Quad Q9450 quad-core chip, Dell's only quad-core option is Intel's older, slower Core 2 Quad Q6600 running at stock speed. Velocity Micro also has the more recent NForce 750i SLI chipset, and the 64-bit version of Windows Vista. Dell lags on both of those options.

Of course, our test results reflect the XPS 630 we reviewed, which has less memory than the 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 RAM in the Velocity Micro Edge E2250. Between its larger memory allotment and its overclocked, next-generation Intel quad-core chip, the Velocity Micro system plows through all of our application tests, besting the Dell, the $1,999 Uberclok Ion, and others. Photoshop especially benefits from more memory, so it's obvious why the Velocity Micro is a strong performer there, but Cinebench is processor reliant, and shows similarly compelling results.

The Cinebench multiple CPU rendering test in particular puts all four processing cores to work to render a video image. Although the Velocity Micro and the Uberclok Ion each have a quad-core chip with the same 3.2GHz clock speed, the Uberclok's older Core 2 Quad Q6600 proves no match for the Velocity Micro's newer Core 2 Quad Q9450. The result is much faster multicore processing on the Velocity Micro system. This is why the Velocity Micro earns our admiration as one of the best multimedia performers in its class.

We're less enthused about the Edge E2250's gaming performance. It's definitely fast enough to handle every title currently on the market at a high resolution, with the exception of Crysis. That game continues to vex systems that cost twice as much as this one. The real problem is the Velocity Micro's gaming scores relative to the XPS 630. On our most important gaming benchmarks, namely the high resolution Unreal Tournament 3 test and the low-resolution Crysis test, the Dell system that costs about $300 less beats the Edge E2250 by a small but noticeable margin. The reason is likely because the Dell has two 512MB GeForce 8800 GT cards. One of those by itself would be slower than the Velocity's higher-end GeForce 9800 GTX, but in tandem they're faster. From a bang-for-the-buck perspective, the Dell has a clear advantage here, making the Edge E2250 hard to recommend if you're looking for a relatively affordable gaming system.

If the Velocity Micro has an role as a gaming PC, it's for those who are less concerned about price and who are willing to make post-purchase upgrades. Because even though the less expensive Dell beat the Edge E2250 on our gaming tests, it needed two 3D cards to do it. The Velocity system needs only one, and it still has a graphics card slot to spare. If you were to add a second GeForce 9800 GTX card (a $300 upgrade) on top of this already strong foundation, we suspect the Edge E2250 would blow by the highest-end XPS 630 you could configure. You should be careful going much higher than two 9800 GTX cards (we wouldn't try two GeForce 9800 GX2's, for example) as this system has only a 500-watt power supply.