Gateway FX6850-51u

The Gateway FX6850-51u ($999.99 direct) is an entry-level gaming PC, giving you minimal performance on high-end DirectX 11 games like Lost Planet 2 with all the settings and textures turned up and playable frame rates at medium settings. And although, the FX6850-51u is selling at a sweet sub-$1,000 price, there are other desktops with faster parts and more future-forward features, like Blu-ray and USB 3.0, for the same price.

Design and Features
The FX6850-51u's design echoes previous iterations of the FX gaming desktop line, like the ($1,099.99 list, 3 stars). It's not as bold as Alienware's offerings, but its black glossy finish is accented by two glowing red grills on either side adding a bit of gaming flare. On the top of the system is a protruding lip that has a selection of easily accesable I/O ports, like a card reader (SD/MMC, xD, Micro SD, CF, and MS/PRO), two USB 2.0, and audio jacks. There's also a "Photo Frame Button" that will present images in a slideshow format from any inserted card—if there isn't any card in one of the slots, it will pull the images you store in the huge 1TB 7,200rpm hard drive. At this size, any multimedia downloader should be satisfied, but there's room to expand just in case. Two hard drive bays in front of the PC are already wired and ready for hook up. There's also an open optical drive bay (also wired) where you could put a Blu-ray player, as the FX6850-51u only comes with a Super-multi DVD drive.

Connectivity options include two PS/2 ports (for older keyboards and mice), 6 USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet, DisplayPort, DVI, HDMI, and audio jacks; and that's just in the back of the system. There's an indent in the top of the FX6850-51u's chassis to put your mp3 players, hard drives, and other devices—in the back of this tray there are two more USB 2.0 ports to easily connect your devices. I would have liked an eSATA or USB 3.0 port to add faster data transfer speeds for hard drives that USB 2.0 can't replicate. Also, other desktop PCs at the same price point, like the ($999 direct, 4.5 stars) and ($1,099 direct, 4.5 stars), contain both eSATA and USB 3.0 ports. In addition to the hard-line Ethernet connection, the FX6850-51u also has integrated 802.11n Wi-Fi to connect you to the internet.

Cracking the system open is easy enough, after unscrewing two screws the side panel slid open to reveal two open PCIe x1 and two SATA ports. The PCIe x16 slot is being taken up by an Nvidia GeForce GT 440 (1.5GB), if you're looking to upgrade in the next few years, keep in mind the FX6850-51u comes fitted with a 450W battery, so you'll likely be limited budget GPUs.

Bloatware was kept to a minimum, desktop shortcuts were limited to eBay, Netflix, Nook for PC, Skype, and NY Times Reader. While I would prefer none of these programs to be on the desktop or anywhere on the system, it's better than the 4 different eReaders I saw on one system.

Performance
The FX6850-51u comes outfitted with Intel's second-generation Core i7-2600 (3.4GHz) processor, 8GB of RAM, and the aforementioned Nvidia GeForce GT 440 (1.5GB) graphics card. On our CPU-intensive tests, the FX6850 had a leg up on the competition because of its refreshed processor. It scored 10,355 on our PCMark Vantage and 6.81 on CineBench R11.5, above and beyond the Velocity Micro's Intel Core i5-760 CPU (8,622 on PCMark and 4.87 on CineBench R11.5) and Cyberpower's AMD Phenom II X6 1055T (PCMark 8,171 and R11.5 5.84).

On the creative end, the FX6850-51u ran through our 12 filters in Photoshop CS5 in 3 minutes 3 seconds and encoded a video in Handbrake in 1:39. The Velocity Micro had a better showing(CS5 3:29 and Handbrake 1:34), though it still trailed behind, while the Cyberpower (CS5 4:28 and Handbrake 2:09) could barely keep up.

Gaming and 3D performance, however, is more what the FX6850-51u is gauged for, and it had a decent showing on our tests, provided you keep the settings a Medium. On Crysis (DirectX 10) it put out a playable 62.11frames per second (fps) on Medium settings and an unplayable 8.77fps on Very High. Our DirectX 11 Lost Planet 2 test proved a bit more taxing on Medium settings, eking out 34.7fps. The Velocity Micro, however, was able to churn out playable frame rates on both gaming tests on Medium and High settings.

The Gateway FX6850-51u isn't the best gaming desktop PC on the market for its price, and while the Velocity Micro Holiday Edition can't trounce it in multimedia creation tests, it proves to be the best in gaming and provides better features, like Blu-ray, USB 3.0, and eSATA.

COMPARISON TABLE

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