Velocity Micro Edge Gx435 (Core i7 920 2.66 GHz : none.)

Price/performance is off the charts. Bought for HD video editing, it is a sheer joy to use. Having had no desktop for a year or two, (several laptops and netbooks instead), it so nice to have some performance again. I purchased from Amazon for roughly $1200. Incredible bargain as the machine was less than the Compaq!

The basic trade off between this and purchasing direct from Velocity is that the machine is, as far as I can tell, untuned. Personally, I am happy with having paid 2/3 the cost and giving up the extra performance as my chief concern is reliability. I wanted a fast machine that would last for a few years and provide a reasonable platform going forward. Obviously, those savvy enough can do their own tuning and save the bucks.

Never been much of a gamer but just finished playing Far Cry 2. Performance was excellent from my perspective, likely theres more in the box with some setup which I'm unwilling to do.

Perhaps those of you who have been desktop adherents all along will think otherwise, but for me, whose last desktop was a 1Ghz AMD from about 5 or 6 years ago, this machine is from another planet. I love it and can honesty say after a month or so of use, it is the best computer purchase I have ever made.

I've been shopping for the past couple of months and was actually going to build a gaming pc. My budget was less than $1500 as I am not looking to go overboard and I"m not a pro gamer and I felt that this price range would suffice for my needs. After extensive research, I really wanted the Intel i7 processor as from all of the reviews I've read, there is a huge difference between intel's last gen chipsets. But, after pricing the components I wanted with the i7, it didn't look feasible as it went over what i was willing to spend. So, my intentions were to get an Intel quad core. I went out the past Saturday to buy my system and as I got close to the Circuit City near me, I saw signs outside stating that they were clearing out the store since it would be closing the next day. I figured I would give it a shot just to see what was available and maybe get a component for a decent price. When I walked in, the store was packed and it had been pretty well picked through. There was one aisle with floor model desktops available - some hp's, compaq's and two Velocity Micro systems. One of them was a quad-core which was priced at $700 and the other one was an i7 which was originally listed at $2100 but marked down to $1200. After looking it over and realizing that it was an i7 processor, DX58SO mobo, dual Radeon 4850 (crossfire) i couldn't pass it up. I'm amazed at how fast it was immediately compared to my old P4. I haven't even OC'd it yet and when I saw the windows media experience index of 5.9 - i had to laugh. my old pc was a 2.0. One thing I really like about how VM configures their systems is there are no junk applications installed, just the basics.. everything is put together extremely well in the case all wires hidden and tucked away - fans on every component that gets hot, i counted eight in there!!! Overall very happy with my purchase, not only because I got the i7 I didn't think I could get but a very well put together system that I didn't have to do by myself! The only upgrades I'm going to do are bump up the RAM and pick up another hard drive. I"m also looking at a 30" monitor (gateway) - that monitor is gorgeous and it supports 2560 x 1600 - other than that... i think i'm good for awhile!