What to do with all these media card slots...?
by AC - permalink
So I ordered a new eMachines T6524 desktop earlier than I'd planned. I watched Best Buy after Best Buy run out of stock and decided to hurry up and order one. I actually ended up buying it from CompUSA, because shipping was cheaper -- so cheap that I ordered it overnighted on Thursday morning, and 24 hours later it was here. Apparently I got in just under the wire, because eMachines stopped selling the 6524 as of this weekend.
So. The Athlon 64 3500+ is impressive. Most impressive. Then again, I'm moving up from a Duron 800. Still haven't actually done anything with the double-layer DVD burner. And I'm trying to figure out what the hell is up with the video adapter.
It's an ATI Radeon Xpress 200 series that's supposed to use up to 128MB of the system's 1GB of PC3200 DDR RAM. Instead, it uses a fixed 64MB of it. What? While it blows the doors off Ghost Recon and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Quake III Arena performance is only mediocre, and it appears I way overshot when I picked up Doom 3 yesterday morning. Even at 640x480 and with bump mapping and specular lighting off, it can barely run. That's not surprising with only 64MB of vidRAM, but I was expecting 128MB shared, as advertised. That's just all kinds of suck.
Still, the specs prove it's a bargain. And it does have a free 16X PCI-e slot, so in a few weeks I'll drop in a midrange, 256MB vidcard, which should let this box run anything from Half-Life 2 to Quake 4 to F.E.A.R. But it's all the older games I couldn't run on my old rig I really want right now, and they're dirt cheap. I picked up MoH: Allied Assault for ten bucks, and games like Halo, Far Cry, and Call of Duty are $20 apiece. There's no suck about that.
by AC - permalink
So I ordered a new eMachines T6524 desktop earlier than I'd planned. I watched Best Buy after Best Buy run out of stock and decided to hurry up and order one. I actually ended up buying it from CompUSA, because shipping was cheaper -- so cheap that I ordered it overnighted on Thursday morning, and 24 hours later it was here. Apparently I got in just under the wire, because eMachines stopped selling the 6524 as of this weekend.
So. The Athlon 64 3500+ is impressive. Most impressive. Then again, I'm moving up from a Duron 800. Still haven't actually done anything with the double-layer DVD burner. And I'm trying to figure out what the hell is up with the video adapter.
It's an ATI Radeon Xpress 200 series that's supposed to use up to 128MB of the system's 1GB of PC3200 DDR RAM. Instead, it uses a fixed 64MB of it. What? While it blows the doors off Ghost Recon and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Quake III Arena performance is only mediocre, and it appears I way overshot when I picked up Doom 3 yesterday morning. Even at 640x480 and with bump mapping and specular lighting off, it can barely run. That's not surprising with only 64MB of vidRAM, but I was expecting 128MB shared, as advertised. That's just all kinds of suck.
Still, the specs prove it's a bargain. And it does have a free 16X PCI-e slot, so in a few weeks I'll drop in a midrange, 256MB vidcard, which should let this box run anything from Half-Life 2 to Quake 4 to F.E.A.R. But it's all the older games I couldn't run on my old rig I really want right now, and they're dirt cheap. I picked up MoH: Allied Assault for ten bucks, and games like Halo, Far Cry, and Call of Duty are $20 apiece. There's no suck about that.
4 comments:
Any idea what eMachines plans to roll out to replace the T6524? I've looked for news and press releases but have found none. They didn't even announce anything at the CES in Vegas this weekend.
They replaced the 6524 with a model called T6420. It's already online and on sale.
I can only see two real differences: an Athlon 64 3400+ replaces the 3500+, and the integrated ATI vidset is swapped out for one from nVidia. Still shares system RAM though.
Oh, and it's fifty dollars cheaper.
I don't think the T6420 is a replacement for the T6524. The 6420 and 6524 have always both been listed at least until a few weeks ago. Besides the differences you mention the 6420 also does not have dual optical drives. Was thinking they would be coming out with either a machine based on the dual core technology or the viiv technology.
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