eMachines T2625

Priced at $749 (not including monitor), eMachine's top-of-the-line T2625 stands tall among its budget-minded competitors. It bundles an Athlon XP 2600+ processor, 512MB of memory, and--perhaps most unbelievably--a multiformat, DVD-recordable drive. But the system's performance on our tests was poor, and it lacks some useful accoutrements to its high-end features.

Like its other T-series models (including the T2341), eMachines houses the T2625 in a compact silver-and-black case. Removing two thumbscrews gets you inside, where you'll find a fair amount of expansion room: two free PCI slots, an open 3.5-inch drive bay, and an unoccupied AGP slot. The rest of the T2625's bays contain the aforementioned 4X DVD-recordable drive, a DVD-ROM drive, and a 120GB hard drive.

The T2625 serves up good connectivity with two USB 2.0 ports and headphone and microphone jacks on the front panel. You'll find four additional USB 2.0 ports and an Ethernet jack on the back. The system lacks a FireWire port--an especially odd decision considering the system's recordable DVD drive.

eMachines' extends the case's color theme to its peripherals. We looked at the company's new 15-inch E15T flat panel, which costs an extra $400 (or $300 after a rebate that's good until October 15, 2003). It's fairly sharp and clear, though a little dark around the edges, at its native 1,024x768 resolution. The bundled roller-ball mouse and multimedia keyboard work fine, but we definitely recommend upgrading to an optical mouse. While you're at it, upgrade the eMachines' two-piece speaker set, which is usable for only the most casual listening. For software, eMachines provides copies of Microsoft Works, PowerDVD, and Roxio EasyCD Creator, but it doesn't include a DVD-burning app.

The T2625's benchmark performance was its biggest disappointment. Despite its Athlon XP 2600+ processor running at 2.12GHz and 512MB of DDR memory running at an admittedly poky 266MHz, the system posted a SysMark2002 score of just 157. This is the first Athlon 2600+-based system we've seen, but systems using a 2GHz Pentium 4 processor outperformed it. As for graphics performance, the T2625 relies on 32MB of integrated S3 ProSavage graphics, which even amateur gamers will find inadequate. To its credit, in our hands-on tests, we were able to edit captured video smoothly--but slowly.

The T2625 ships with a standard one-year warranty, which is extendable to three years. Phone support is available every day from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., and chat is available Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT. The eMachines Web site is chock-full of service information. Although onsite service isn't an option, the company does have a depot repair program and an End-User Replaceable Parts program.

Application performance  (Longer bars indicate better performance) BAPCo SysMark2002 rating    SysMark2002 Internet-content-creation rating    SysMark2002 office-productivity rating

Dell Dimension 2350 (2GHz Pentium 4, 256MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz) 190  262  138  Sony VAIO PCV-RS100 (2GHz Pentium 4, 256MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz) 184  264  128  HP Pavilion 734n (2GHz Athlon XP 2400+, 512MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz) 165  218  125  eMachines T2625 (2.12GHz Athlon XP 2600+, 512MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz) 157  208  119  HP Pavilion a210e (1.67GHz Athlon XP 2000+, 256MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz) 125  169  93

3D graphics performance  (Longer bars indicate better performance) Futuremark 3DMark2001 Second Edition Build 330 (16-bit color)    Futuremark 3DMark2001 Second Edition Build 330 (32-bit color)

HP Pavilion 734n (Nvidia GeForce4 MX 420) 4,927  3,997  Dell Dimension 2350 (Intel 845G/GL) 1,920  1,390  Sony VAIO PCV-RS100 (Intel 845G/GL) 1,789  1,303  HP Pavilion a210e (S3 ProSavage DDR) 750  512  eMachines T2625 (S3 ProSavage DDR) N/A  N/A

3D gaming performance in fps  (Longer bars indicate better performance) Quake III Arena

HP Pavilion 734n (Nvidia GeForce4 MX 420) 85.7  Dell Dimension 2350 (Intel 845G/GL) 23.7  Sony VAIO PCV-RS100 (Intel 845G/GL) 23.3  eMachines T2625 (S3 ProSavage DDR) 14.0  HP Pavilion a210e (S3 ProSavage DDR) 12.1