Benchmark Setup
Readers always want to know how a system performs, so naturally, we ran some benchmarks. Let us preface the benchmark segment by simply saying that this is not the most important aspect of this system. There are very few tasks that really need this much computing power, and those that do will probably need a better graphics card. If you're running Word and other office applications, the biggest bottleneck is going to be user input.
That said, we ran several configurations of the HP system through some benchmarks, and we compared the results with a similar custom built system. We expect the custom system to come out ahead by a slight margin, but its purpose is more to show that the HP doesn't have any serious issues. Here are the system specifications for both HP and the custom system.
As you can see, besides the change in motherboard, we also used CL2 RAM. Almost no one who purchases their own memory is going to buy CL3 RAM. HP could easily have installed CL2 instead of CL3 RAM, but reliability and cost savings are the name of the game, and CL3 memory will rarely cause instabilities. (At least their command rate is still 1T.) This is not intended to be an apples-to-apples comparison, and we used an Athlon 64 3800+ Venice core in our comparison system. As we mentioned before, we think upgrading to an X2 processor would be a good idea - for either configuration. You can get an X2 3800+ system as a Smart Buy for less money, though the HDD and optical drive are unfortunately downgraded in the process.
One area that is clearly lacking is the graphics card department. Even if you choose to pay the extra money to customize the system (Smart Buys don't allow customization of the components), you can only select an X300SE with 64MB or 128MB. Both are only slightly faster than the Xpress 200 IGP, and the cost is more than what we would pay for such anemic hardware. To test how the DX5150 performs as a family (gaming) system, we installed three different graphics cards to show what's really possible.
First, we have a stock GeForce 6600 card from Gigabyte, which can be had for $100 and will easily outperform the IGP or either X300SE. Moving to the $200 range, we have an X800 Pro 256MB (which is relatively similar in performance to the X800 XL and GTO cards, though the GTO will often overclock better). Finally, we used an XFX 7800 GTX 256MB, which most buyers of the HP business systems would never even consider. This was mostly used to highlight the system bottleneck (slower RAM and a tuned for stability BIOS), as well as to verify that the 250W PSU could handle such a card. The benefit is that you get to see how two "moderate" systems perform in a variety of benchmarks - we frequently see requests for such benchmarks from our readers.
The charts are colored according to which graphics card is in use. To be fair, you should only compare similarly colored results. We ran most benchmarks on every configuration, but there are a few cases where the graphics card has absolutely no impact on performance.
Readers always want to know how a system performs, so naturally, we ran some benchmarks. Let us preface the benchmark segment by simply saying that this is not the most important aspect of this system. There are very few tasks that really need this much computing power, and those that do will probably need a better graphics card. If you're running Word and other office applications, the biggest bottleneck is going to be user input.
That said, we ran several configurations of the HP system through some benchmarks, and we compared the results with a similar custom built system. We expect the custom system to come out ahead by a slight margin, but its purpose is more to show that the HP doesn't have any serious issues. Here are the system specifications for both HP and the custom system.
| HP DX5150 Configuration | |
| Motherboard: | HP DX5150 (ATI Xpress 200 chipset) |
| Processor: | AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (ClawHammer) |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB Samsung PC3200 (3-3-3-8-1T) |
| Hard Drive: | Samsung 160GB SP1614C SATA |
| Video Cards: | Xpress 200 IGP Gigabyte GeForce 6600 PowerColor X800 Pro PCIe VIVO XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB (450/1250 clocks) |
| Chipset/Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 5.12 IGP CCC ATI Catalyst 5.11 CCC NVIDIA ForceWare 81.95 |
| Operating System: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
| Custom System Configuration | |
| Motherboard: | ASUS A8N-VM CSM (NVIDIA 6150 plus 430 chipset) |
| Processor: | AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (Venice) |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB OCZ PC4800 EL Platinum (2-2-2-7-1T DDR400) |
| Hard Drive: | Hitachi 250GB T7K250 SATA-2 |
| Chipset Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce4 AMD 6.70 |
| Video Cards: | GeForce 6150 IGP Gigabyte GeForce 6600 PowerColor X800 Pro PCIe VIVO XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB (450/1250 clocks) |
| Video Drivers: | nForce4 430/410 8.22 ATI Catalyst 5.11 CCC NVIDIA ForceWare 81.95 |
| Power Supply: | Thermaltake Silent PurePower W0031 ATX 410W |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
As you can see, besides the change in motherboard, we also used CL2 RAM. Almost no one who purchases their own memory is going to buy CL3 RAM. HP could easily have installed CL2 instead of CL3 RAM, but reliability and cost savings are the name of the game, and CL3 memory will rarely cause instabilities. (At least their command rate is still 1T.) This is not intended to be an apples-to-apples comparison, and we used an Athlon 64 3800+ Venice core in our comparison system. As we mentioned before, we think upgrading to an X2 processor would be a good idea - for either configuration. You can get an X2 3800+ system as a Smart Buy for less money, though the HDD and optical drive are unfortunately downgraded in the process.
One area that is clearly lacking is the graphics card department. Even if you choose to pay the extra money to customize the system (Smart Buys don't allow customization of the components), you can only select an X300SE with 64MB or 128MB. Both are only slightly faster than the Xpress 200 IGP, and the cost is more than what we would pay for such anemic hardware. To test how the DX5150 performs as a family (gaming) system, we installed three different graphics cards to show what's really possible.
First, we have a stock GeForce 6600 card from Gigabyte, which can be had for $100 and will easily outperform the IGP or either X300SE. Moving to the $200 range, we have an X800 Pro 256MB (which is relatively similar in performance to the X800 XL and GTO cards, though the GTO will often overclock better). Finally, we used an XFX 7800 GTX 256MB, which most buyers of the HP business systems would never even consider. This was mostly used to highlight the system bottleneck (slower RAM and a tuned for stability BIOS), as well as to verify that the 250W PSU could handle such a card. The benefit is that you get to see how two "moderate" systems perform in a variety of benchmarks - we frequently see requests for such benchmarks from our readers.
The charts are colored according to which graphics card is in use. To be fair, you should only compare similarly colored results. We ran most benchmarks on every configuration, but there are a few cases where the graphics card has absolutely no impact on performance.
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JarredWalton - Thursday, December 15, 2005 - link
I was waiting for someone to ask that. :-)Honestly, I threw them in for home users that might want to purchase such a system. For businesses, they mean nothing. Still, to a certain extent, benchmarks are benchmarks; many of the gaming tests are impacted by the GPU used, but if a system like this can handle high end game, it can certainly handle running Photoshop, Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, and all the other typical office applications.
Ditiris - Thursday, December 15, 2005 - link
I work for a small defense company (I fell/was forced into the IT position) and purchased ten of these systems for our new classified LAN where most of the work will be compute intensive applications (MATLAB simulations, for instance). I have, up until this time purhcased Dell systems because pricing on AMD systems from other OEMs was too high to justify the performance gains over the Intel systems from Dell.It was nice to see your article follow the same line of reasoning that I did Jarred. I would be very interested in similar articles in the future, from the perspective of the small to medium business needs.
For those saying there isn't an X2 core, I can verify that indeed they do have an X2 core. I got all my systems shipped with X2 3800+ cores. I don't know if the sku numbers are right, but you can definitely get the system with an X2 core.
For the caution, the first system, which I purchased as a test system, arrived in less than a week. After testing the system with all our software and making sure there were no WinXP 64 compatibility issues, I ordered nine more on 11/23 which took until 12/14 to arrive.
I received an automatic notice from HP that there was a delay in fulfilling my order after a week and that the original ship date on my order confirmation would be, well, delayed. Since there wasn't an estimated ship date on my order confirmation, nor a new ship date on the delay notification, I can say HP's order estimation needs some work. Fortunately, this wasn't an issue for me.
I ordered the sort of bargain configuration with 160 GB drive, CD-ROM, 512 MB RAM. Because of security requirements, we are required to remove the hard drives and put them in caddies. So, I separately purchased DVD-R/W's and 4 GB of RAM for each machine. If we're taking apart the systems anyway I'm not paying 300% markup for those parts.
For what it's worth, I'm extremely satisfied with the test box I've been using for three weeks. But, you might want to talk to a CSR to see what the wait time will be if you need the systems fast.
AstroCreep - Thursday, December 15, 2005 - link
Yeah, my company has bought a few of them too. Great little systems!We've been purchasing HP (and Compaq before them) for a few years now and have been pretty happy with the quality & service (better than the Gateways we used to buy before I worked here).
We've been getting the $600 system which consists of an Athlon64 3200+, 80GB HDD, 512GB RAM. For our needs, they work wonderfully; sure we might consider something different for our CAD guys and graphic-artists, but for the rest of our users who are more or less just 'Office' people, they're great!
I can also attest to the shipping issues of HP-Direct. We have an account with them and for the last few years we bought direct. This past year however has changed my opinion - by June three of our six orders I placed direct were delayed beyond the quoted date (which was always about a week after the order was placed to begin with), so now I generally go through CDW, PC Mall, Insight, etc. Besides, HP is changing their business focus and are placing greater emphasis on selling through reseller channels versus direct. Will obviously still be an option though. ;)
OrSin - Thursday, December 15, 2005 - link
One other thing I'm sick or people stating. Amd could not uspply all the OEMs. Of course not, becuase right now they do need to. Who the hell is goig to have the capacity to supply 5 time what is in demand. If more OEM use them they will ramp up just like every other company in the world. AMD have not had a supply problem in 4 years. Intel has had chipset supply and processor supply problems off and on for the last 3 years, but no one says let stop buying intel they can't supply us stuff. I know its not all OEM problesm since most of the buying managers are old farts, that still be believe IBM is the greatest company on earth. So you see how far behind the times they are.johnsonx - Thursday, December 15, 2005 - link
it's the same old thing: no one ever got fired for buying Intel (formerly IBM). If you're an IT manager for a company, why buy AMD? If you buy Intel, and some odd problem comes up, no one will blame you (after all, Intel is THE standard). If you buy AMD, and some problem comes up, well good luck finding another job. Sure, it isn't likely, but why bother with it in the first place?JarredWalton - Thursday, December 15, 2005 - link
You also have to remember that even when Intel has had supply problems, those are mostly for the retail market. Big OEMs get first priority, and the bigger you are the higher your priority. Business OEM chips are almost never in short supply from Intel. It's the high-end "exotic" parts that are sometimes more difficult to buy, but the starndard SIPP components are almost always in abundance.OrSin - Thursday, December 15, 2005 - link
What really getting me about all the OEM is the way they just disrespect AMD systems.HP's catalog does list a since AMD system. But if you talk to them in person or go on line they push how great thier AMD systems are if you bring it up. ITs like AMD is an after thought for them. But hwta really pisses me off is the way HP had push thier low cost amd systems for the Black friday sales, then all of sudden they will not sell them any more. It stays out stock on thier site. It really mean we perfer to sell intel only we only have amd to get people to look at us.
Furen - Thursday, December 15, 2005 - link
Power supplies are rated on their output current, not their input current. If you are measuring the power draw at the plug (before the power supply) then your power draw will be quite a bit higher than what the system is actually drawing (Seasonics achieve ~85% efficiency and I doubt these PSUs are comparable to those).I would guess the efficiency of that PSU is around 80% TOPS (that's a great efficiency, since most PSUs out there struggle to hit even 75%) which would mean that your power draw is actually ~180W using a 7800GTX (225 * 0.8), which means that you should have quite a bit of juice still left (if the PSU can actually achieve a 210 or so on the 12v rail, having 70W or so on the 5v line doesn't really help).
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 15, 2005 - link
That's true, but wall power is a lot easier to measure. :-)PrinceGaz - Friday, December 16, 2005 - link
I think he's referring to this bit you wrote:"... but even in the worst-case scenario (i.e. using a 7800 GTX), power draw never reached above 225 Watts. You would still have enough room to add a second hard drive, assuming that the power supply can sustain 250 Watts."
That situation when the INPUT power was 225 watts most probably meant that the OUTPUT power from the PSU was likely to be no more than 180 watts. That is a full 70 watts under the 250 watts the PSU is rated at, whereas you suggest there was only 25 watts to spare. But a very good review overall, Jarred.