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Product summary
The good: Clean design inside and out.
The bad: No 64-bit Windows Vista option; relatively poor application performance; limited upgradeability.
The bottom line: As much as we like the look and feel of Velocity Micro's Vector Campus Edition desktop, we can't recommend it. It suffers from poor bang-for-the-buck, a lack of configurable options, and a narrow upgrade path.
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 07/10/2008
Editors' note July 11, 2008: Velocity Micro has expanded the configuration options for this PC to include 64-bit Windows, an older quad-core CPU, and other hardware upgrades that weren't listed during the course of this review.
We normally have good things to say about Velocity Micro's Campus Edition back-to-school desktops. This year's model, the $999 Vector Campus Edition, leaves us disappointed because of its uninspired configuration. We still find Velocity Micro's desktop design among the best in the industry, and this system's visual appeal and craftsmanship are models for other vendors to follow, especially in this price range. But to anyone for whom performance matters most, we suggest you can get more for your money from other vendors.
The Vector Campus Edition is a configurable desktop available directly from Velocity Micro's Web site. Our review configuration will be available for purchase on July 14. If you play around with the configurator, you can improve this system's overall value (swapping out the TV tuner card for a large hard drive, for example), but with no options for 64-bit Windows Vista or quad-core CPUs, there's little to get excited about here.
We'll compare the Vector Campus Edition directly with Gateway's FX7026 from last quarter. Sadly, that system is no longer available, and we're working on getting our hands on Gateway's newer models. They also bear mentioning here.
| Velocity Micro Vector Campus Edition | Gateway FX7026 | |
| Price | $999 | $1,099 |
| CPU | 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 | 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 |
| Memory | 2GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM | 4GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM |
| Graphics | 384MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GS | 512MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT (overclocked) |
| Hard drives | 500GB, 7,200rpm | (2) 320GB, 7,200rpm |
| Optical drive | dual-layer DVD burner | dual-layer DVD burner |
| Networking | Gigabit Ethernet, 802/11g | Gigabit Ethernet |
| Operating system | Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (32-bit) | Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (64-bit) |
| TV Tuner | Yes | Yes |
The Gateway FX7026 costs $100 more than the Vector Campus Edition, but you can see from its specifications that Gateway gives you a lot more for your money. Most notable is the fact that the FX7026 has twice the memory. We also appreciate its more ambitious, overclocked 3D card, as well as its more generous allotment of hard drive space. The 2.5GHz quad-core CPU, compared with the Velocity Micro's 2.53GHz dual-core chip, also shows that you no longer need to sacrifice multitasking prowess for raw clock speed.
When we look to Gateway's current offerings in this price range, namely the $1,150 FX4710 and the $900 DX4710, we find that Gateway has expanded its midrange ambitions. The pricier FX4710 is the only model with a discrete 3D card, so you'll have to spend a bit more than either the Vector Campus Edition or the FX7026 to get competent gaming capabilities. But the fact that both of those models have 6GB of RAM and 64-bit Windows Vista make the 32-bit Vector Campus Edition and its 2GB of memory look out-of-date.
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Rendering Multiple CPUs | |
Rendering Single CPU |
We have no performance results for the newer Gateways, but the FX7026, a 64-bit Windows system with 4GB of RAM, demonstrates the impact of those benefits well enough. The simple fact is that the Gateway FX7026 is faster than the Velocity Micro Vector Campus Edition on every single application test. The Photoshop results show the most dramatic performance gap, and that memory intensive test proves that a 64-bit Windows system that puts more memory to work has an advantage over a 32-bit PC, especially one with less RAM. And as our iTunes, CineBench, and multitasking tests show, the quad-core Gateway is also more capable than the dual-core Velocity Micro system on tests that depend largely on either raw CPU speed or multiple processing scores.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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