Compaq Presario SA4000T - P4 560 3.6 GHz - 15" TFT

CNET editors' review

• Reviewed by:
  Stephen Bigelow
• Edited by:
  Matthew Elliott
• Reviewed on: 09/10/2004
• Updated on: 11/07/2009

Ever since HP and Compaq joined forces, the company has painted its Pavilion line as the desktop for creative multimedia applications while giving its Compaq Presario line a serious-minded productivity persona. But with many of the same parts available on each PC line, the division is more marketing than engineering. For purely office use, you won't need many of the parts included on our expensive, $2,424 HP Compaq Presario SA4000T test system. Scale back on your order, and you'll save a bundle of money and still get ample power for keeping your home or office humming along at a productive clip.

As configured, our Presario SA4000T test system has 1GB of 533MHz DDR2 memory and uses Intel's Pentium 4 560 processor; clocked at 3.6GHz, the 560 is the top processor in the P4 line. Of course, you'll pay a premium for that speed. The sweet spot in the P4 line is the P4 540, which is clocked at 3.2GHz and priced $300 less than the 560 model on the SA4000T's online configurator. (Oddly, the difference in price in the same two processors on the HP m1050y Media Center is $440.) Unless you engage in DV editing, animation, CAD, or other intensive graphics tasks, you can save money by choosing a slower processor. The SA4000T's SysMark 2004 score of 210 is outstanding, but it's only 12 percent faster than that of the MPC ClientPro 545, which uses the more affordable 3.2GHz P4.

HP does scale back on the SA4000T's graphics card, however. Our test system came equipped with ATI's midrange Radeon X600 Pro, which uses the new PCI Express interface (your only other choice is the budget X300). Its 3D graphics scores on Unreal Tournament 2003 underline the point that this system is built for demanding business apps but not serious gaming. The SA4000T trails systems such as the Dell Dimension 8400 that use a high-end GPU, but it serves up enough oomph for its intended digital-content-creation tasks.

The Presario SA4000T really shines at media handling and storage. Two 80GB Seagate Barracuda 7,200rpm SATA drives come arranged as a single 160GB drive RAID 0 volume, which speeds drive performance by combining the two drives into one virtual drive (rather than treating them as two separate volumes). In addition, the Presario adds a removable 160GB Personal Media Drive, which slides into a slot on the front panel--giving you an easy method for backing up or sharing files--and connects externally via USB 2.0.

The SA4000T's midtower case doesn't provide much room for expansion; similarly high-end systems typically give their owners more room to tinker. You get one free external 3.5-inch bay, should the system's three hard drives not suffice. Below the system's nine-in-one media-card reader sits an open, front-accessible 3.5-inch bay; above the reader, there's one unoccupied 5.25-inch bay. Our test system included a standard CD-ROM drive along with an 8X double-layer DVD+R drive.

The double-layer drive lets you use high-capacity 8.5GB discs, which can hold entire DVD movies--extras included. If movies are your thing, however, you'll want to improve upon the audio and video output of our test system's bundled 15-inch LCD. The Compaq FP5315 includes onboard speakers (no separate speakers were included with our evaluation unit), but the resulting sound is tinny and weak. Image quality was merely adequate at its native 1,024x768 resolution; a slight blur made small text and fine detail difficult to see. And without a DVI connector, the monitor doesn't allow you to use the digital connection that the system's Radeon X600 Pro provides.

Offers for third-party apps comprise the majority of the Presario SA4000T's disappointing software bundle. For the amount of multimedia-friendly hardware, from the double-layer DVD+R drive to the Personal Media Drive, we were surprised to find only Microsoft Works 7.0 (with Money 2004/MSN Encarta Plus). We've seen far less capable systems sporting many more bundled applications. Unfortunately, you'll need to drop more money into programs to use the system to its best advantage.

The Compaq Presario SA4000T is protected by a standard one-year parts-and-labor warranty, which includes 24/7 toll-free technical support for that year and depot service (HP pays shipping both ways). HP offers extensive support through its Web site, including drivers, troubleshooting help, and an array of FAQs and other information.

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).

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