The two-and-a-half thousand dollar price point is a popular one for PC systems. But who’d have thought several month’s ago that you’d be able to buy one with a dual-core Athlon 64 X2 4400+ in it? Flanked by two sticks of 512GB PC3200 RAM and two 200GB WD hard disks running in RAID 0, it tore into our new benchmarks and scored an impressive 1.14 – 14 percent faster than our top-end reference Intel system. Whatever power-hungry application you want to use this machine for, you can rest assured that the Super Dual AMD 2500 can take care of it.

However, it was a different story in our 3D tests. While the 6600GT can still play most current games, you’ll have to start turning some of the newer eye-pleasing features like HDR off. Don’t get us wrong, Half-Life 2 and Far Cry both look great at 4x antialiasing and 8x anisotropic filtering, and scores of 51fps and 32fps at 1280 x 1024 show they play well, but they’ll struggle a little with the latest generation games and it won’t be long before you’re wanting more. Even for this money, we’d like to have seen more grunt – the A-Listed Dell 9100 beats it with a GeForce 6800. However, there’s a lot more to like about this system. Most notably is that it comes with a 19in LCD display (which is a $100 upgrade with Dell). Please note, however, that it’s a BenQ FP91G not the FP91V as pictured. The two look similar but this one has no speakers and the response time is 12ms. It’s still a good monitor though – bright with decent colour performance. The viewing angles aren’t great and the stand only tilts backwards and forwards, but few will complain – playing games and watching movies were very pleasant.

The case itself looks good, if unremarkable. It’s a touch noisy, thanks mainly to the power supply, but the constant drone isn’t distracting and isn’t too intrusive. Of note are the two silent 120mm case fans – an intake at the front which cools the hard disks and an exhaust at the back. This coupled with some neat cabling ensures good airflow - this should be a very stable system.

There’s still plenty of room for expandability too. There are three free 5.25in bays as well as a good LG DVD writer which offers 16x DVD+R, 6x dual layer DVD+R9 and DVDRAM writing, and a DVD-ROM drive for disc copying. One external 3.5in bay has a floppy drive in it while the other is spare and there’s space for one more internal hard disk should the existing 372GB formatted capacity start to feel restrictive. Three PCI slots and two 1x PCI Express slots are also vacant.

Connectivity options are fairly standard. There are two USB 2 ports at the front with neighbouring headphone and mic jacks. There are six more USB 2 jacks at the back with two FireWire, coaxial S/PDIF in and out, serial and legacy ports and eight-channel audio. There are also two PS/2 connectors spare as the keyboard and mouse are part of the Microsoft Wireless Multimedia Keyboard 1.0. A set which requires just a single USB connector. Both peripherals are very comfortable to use, though our test samples did have a tendency to misfire occasionally – producing an inaccurate letter or mouse jump.

Unlike Dell, TI includes the Creative 2500 2.1 speaker set – a decent, well-rounded sounding option which will more than suffice for people wanting to watch the odd movie and play the odd game - though true audiophiles will want for more.

Finally, there’s the warranty. While some peripherals are limited to one year RTB, the monitor’s is for three. The main system unit is two years RTB – better than many. Some may still prefer Dell’s one-year on-site, however.

But it’s a very close call in comparison with the Dell this month. The latter only has a 160GB hard disk and comes without speakers.

However, the monitor is better as is the graphics card. The Dell has only one optical drive but also sports a Creative Audigy soundcard. As for which you’d prefer depends largely on your priorities. The Dell offers similar performance but is Intel based.

After lengthy deliberation we plumped for the Dell as it offered better peripherals and better 3D graphics. But still for many people TI’s system will better suit their needs and we’re happy to recommend it.