We set the specs and the price and had a look at what Australia's PC vendors could come up with in terms of performance.
For this review we looked at business desktop PCs for under AU$2,000. Some of the main requirements we set were 1GB of memory, built-in Ethernet, and an LCD display. We decided high-end graphics and sound features were not necessary; most companies will not pay for speakers or high-end graphics cards. CD/DVD burners were also not needed (companies tend to provide these separately where appropriate), but a standard CD/DVD drive was required.
CPUs
Intel processors still dominated this review. Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz processors seemed to be the price point where vendors could still supply a fast P4 system under AU$2,000.
It was surprising to find only one vendor who submitted an AMD solution -- that being Paragon who sent us an AMD 64 3000+ processor. It proved to be a wise choice as it came out fastest in our performance tests.
RAM
All the PCs we tested had DDR-RAM bar the Dell which came with DDR2 RAM. DDR-RAM still seems to be the RAM of choice as it's less expensive that DDR2.
DDR2 is the next-generation memory technology. It is based upon DDR memory technology, with enhancements to enable improved performance. These enhancements include faster speeds, higher data bandwidths, lower power consumption, and enhanced thermal performance. DDR2 memory modules are not backward-compatible with DDR, due to incompatible pin configurations, voltage, and DRAM memory chip technology.
DDR2 speeds include 400MHz, 533MHz, and 667MHz and is expected to become the dominant technology by late 2005 or 2006.
Hard Disks
Serial ATA drives are quickly becoming the default standard with new PCs. All the vendors in this review submitted PCs with SATA drives. They were mainly Seagate drives of different sizes, sizes that ranged from 80BG to 120GB (with 120GB a little on the excessive side). One of the reasons SATA is becoming mainstream is because of the huge advantages the format has over traditional parallel ATA (PATA).
Graphics Subsystem
Your graphics subsystem can dramatically increase the overall performance of your PC. Most the vendors in this review submitted integrated solutions, which don't tend to be quite as fast as AGP/PCI Express graphics cards.
I/O Ports
As with many notebooks these days, we are seeing more and more USB ports on PCs. The inclusion of up to eight USB ports is not uncommon with most of the ports on the rear and usually two on the front. A single FireWire port can sometimes be found on some motherboards but typically you would buy a FireWire card if you need FireWire. And of course your good old legacy ports aren't going anywhere in a hurry.
Disk Images
It is important to create an image of your hard disk in case of disastrous crashes which you may not be able to recover from. By having a disk image you will be able to restore your PC to the condition it was when it was working reliably.
A disk image will also save you time installing the operating system, device drivers, and applications from scratch. We should mention that disk images are very rarely changed and usually last for the life of the hardware. If for some reason you were to upgrade any hardware, however, you would have to create a new disk image.
