Editors' note: We mistakenly said that the HP Compaq X Gaming PC GX5000Z came with only an hour of online tech-support chat time. It actually comes with a year of online chat time. We have corrected the Service and Support section of the review and upgraded the Service and Support rating from a 6 to a 7, which moved the overall rating for this PC to an 7.9. We regret the error. (10/13/04)
HP has an X box--not Microsoft's gaming console, but a full-blown computer called the HP Compaq X Gaming PC. With a big red X emblazoned on its chest right above the Compaq logo, the X Gaming PC GX5000Z looks the part of a fully qualified gaming PC. This particular configuration stands at the top of the GX5000Z line, powered by an AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 processor and accompanied by Nvidia's latest GeForce 6800 Ultra graphics card and a 17-inch LCD. It also carries a top-flight price which, if you opt for the upscale model reviewed here, hovers around $3,600. Don't go into shock; that's pricey compared to HP's Pavilion and Presario home PCs but right in line with high-end gaming-system prices. Fortunately for the hard-core gamers who might consider purchasing such an expensive PC, the performance is just as high-end as the price. The HP Compaq X Gaming PC GX5000Z features the same wavy, brushed-aluminum Cooler Master WaveMaster case that has housed many PCs we've seen. At 18.0 by 7.5 by 21.0 inches (HWD), the GX5000Z is a full-size tower. Its main differentiator is the Compaq X logo and the hot-red LED glow radiating from the front panel when you turn the system on. Unlike its custom-shop competition, Compaq will not paint the case for you.
A quartet of 5.25-inch bays greets you from behind the GX5000Z's easy-moving door on the upper portion of the case. Two are available for future expansion, while the other pair holds the system's optical drives. The lone front-accessible 3.5-inch bay houses a nine-in-one media drive that also includes a USB 2.0 port. Two additional USB 2.0 ports and a single FireWire port sit concealed beneath a pop-up panel on top of the case. The rear offers a full complement of ports, including four extra USB 2.0 ports and another FireWire port.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
With its three thumbscrews removed, the side panel slides off easily. Inside the GX5000Z, you'll find four 3.5-inch bays, two of which hold the pair of 10,000rpm SATA drives. Compaq has placed one of them at the top of the row and the other at the bottom. A pair of 80mm fans cools them down, but that type of spacing makes us suspect that the fast-spinning drives generate a lot of heat, which may be an issue should you decide to add more internal storage. We were also less than impressed with Compaq's cabling, which, while not so sloppy as to significantly impede airflow, does not show the attention to detail befitting such a high-priced PC. Check out the internal shots of the Velocity Micro Vision FX AVD for an idea of what we're talking about.
The installed 1GB of memory leaves two sockets for expansion to a maximum of 4GB. Although there are four unfilled PCI slots, only three are accessible, thanks to the severe overhang of the fan and the heat sink on the graphics card. Although the Compaq X Gaming PC GX5000Z is a high-end gaming system, there are currently no AMD-compatible chipsets on the market that support the new PCI-Express (PCIe) interface. This limits your upgrade potential, especially for graphics, and leaves you with only an AGP slot for adding a better graphics card down the road. We expect that graphics-card makers will support the older standard for at least a little while, and in fact, we have yet to see a significant performance difference between AGP and PCIe cards. The lack of the new slot is worth noting, however, because you can expect that PCIe cards' performance will eventually outpace that of AGP models. If you must have PCIe now, you might seek out the Intel processor-based Compaq X Gaming PC GX5000T, whose chipsets support the new interface.
The Compaq X Gaming PC GX5000Z includes a powerful optical drive tandem, with both a 48X combo DVD player/CD-R burner and an 8X double-layer DVD+RW burner. The system's dual 74GB, 10,000rpm SATA hard drives in a RAID-0 configuration offer fast access to just under 150GB of hard drive storage.
The upscale Compaq FP317 17-inch LCD provides a few inches less screen real estate than the 20.1-inch LCD that comes with Dell's Dimension XPS, but Compaq's high-quality display provides a viewing area large enough to comfortably accommodate its 1,280x1,024 maximum resolution. It did strike us as odd that the FP317 has an analog-video input while the GeForce 6800 Ultra has dual digital-video outputs. Compaq solved the connectivity problem easily enough with a converter plug, but you shave the video quality down just a bit with such an arrangement. Most serious gamers will probably want to look into a CRT monitor instead of an LCD for the smoothest gaming, but Compaq offers only one such monitor on the GX5000Z's configuration page: a tiny 17-inch CRT.
Our test system's speakers, or lack thereof, were a big letdown. Gaming is a combination of sight and sound, and the two little drivers hiding inside the lower bezel of the LCD panel just didn't cut it. Why bother replacing the integrated 7.1 Realtek audio with an Audigy 2 ZS for the sake of such a cheap output device? We'd highly recommend a quick look through Compaq's speaker options, and we'll also make a polite nod towards the Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1 system.
The included Compaq-branded mouse and keyboard should suffice for most gaming and general-use purposes, although we would have preferred to see a more refined mouse from Logitech or Microsoft with extra assignable buttons. Apple's iTunes, Sonic RecordNow, InterVideo WinDVD 4.0, Microsoft Windows Movie Maker 2.0, and Adobe Acrobat Reader round out the Windows XP Professional operating system. More than that you'll have to purchase separately from Compaq or elsewhere.
Despite its previous attempts, HP has never been a serious challenger for the gaming-system throne. While the HP Compaq X Gaming PC GX5000Z can't lay claim to the application-performance crown, it comes close enough that the sitting monarch, the Velocity Micro ProMagix PCX, needs to at least sit up and take notice.A 2.4GHz AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 processor helped the GX5000Z hold its own against the fastest PCs we've seen. Its SysMark 2004 score of 203 represents one of the lowest performances in our five-system comparison, but it's still far above the score of most systems that come through our Labs. It's important to consider the value proposition for this type of performance, considering that the Velocity Micro and Alienware systems both cost significantly more than the GX5000Z. Compaq's system might lack some of the pricier systems' polish, but it's got it where it counts, which is more than enough for day-to-day use.
 | BAPCo SysMark 2004 rating | Â Â | | SysMark 2004 Internet-content-creation rating | Â Â | | SysMark 2004 office-productivity rating | Â Â |
To measure application performance, CNET Labs uses BAPCo's SysMark 2004, 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
Along with the other high-end AMD Athlon-based PC in our comparison, the Compaq X Gaming PC GX5000Z produced outstanding scores on our 3D-performance tests. It and the ABS Ultimate M5-64 finished in a statistical dead heat, beating out the next closest competitor by 13 percent on our 1,024x768 Unreal Tournament 2003 test and by about 15 percent on the higher-end 1,600x1,200 resolution test, with a stunning 267.2fps.
Aside from the test scores, which show that the Compaq X Gaming PC GX5000Z is clearly well suited to 3D game playing, you way want to consider that the GX5000Z still uses an AGP graphics card and that both the slower Dell and Velocity Micro systems rely on PCI-Express cards. While you may not see a significant performance difference now, as newer, more advanced games come out and new PCIe cards arrive, we expect PCIe cards to begin outpacing their AGP counterparts.
| Unreal Tournament 2003 Flyby-Antalus 1,600x1,200 4XAA 8XAF | Â Â | | Unreal Tournament 2003 Flyby-Antalus 1,024x768 | Â Â |
To measure 3D gaming performance, CNET Labs uses Epic Games' Unreal Tournament 2003, widely used as an industry-standard benchmark. We use Unreal to measure a desktop's performance with the DirectX 8.0 (DX8) interface at a 32-bit color depth and at resolutions of 1,024x768 and 1,600x1,200. Antialiasing and anisotropic filtering are disabled during our 10x7 tests and are set to 4X and 8X, respectively, during our 16x12 tests. At this color depth and these resolutions, Unreal provides an excellent means of comparing the performance of low-end to high-end graphics subsystems. We report the results of Unreal's Flyby-Antalus test in frames per second (fps).
Performance analysis written by CNET Labs technician David Gussman.
Find out more about how we test desktop systems.
System configurations:
ABS Ultimate M5-64
Windows XP Home; 2.4GHz AMD Athlon 64 3800+; Via K8T880 Pro chipset; 2,048MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition 256MB (AGP); two Maxtor 7Y250M0, 250GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA; integrated Via Serial ATA RAID controller
Alienware Area-51 Extreme
Windows XP Professional; 3.4GHz Intel P4 Extreme; Intel 875P chipset; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce FX 5950 Ultra (AGP); two WDC WD740GD-00FLX0 74GB 10,000rpm Serial ATA; integrated Intel 82801ER SATA RAID controller
Dell Dimension XPS
Windows XP Home; 3.6GHz Intel P4 560; Intel 925X chipset; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 256MB ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition (PCIe); two Maxtor 6Y160M0 160GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA; integrated Intel 82801FR SATA RAID controller
HP Compaq X Gaming PC GX5000Z
Windows XP Professional; 2.4GHz AMD Athlon 64 FX-53; Nforce-3 250 chipset; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra (AGP); two WDC WD740GD-00FLX0 74GB 10,000rpm Serial ATA; integrated Nvidia Nforce ATA RAID-class controller
Velocity Micro ProMagix PCX
Windows XP Professional; 3.6GHz Intel P4 560; Intel 925X chipset; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra (PCIe); two WDC WD740GD-00FLX0 74GB 10,000rpm Serial ATA; Hitachi HDS724040KLSA80 400GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA; integrated Intel 82801FR SATA RAID controller
HP's Web site offers some additional help in the form of a FAQ, driver downloads, a troubleshooting guide, and downloadable manuals. You'll find tech-support chat software preloaded on the GX5000Z that also lasts for a year.