Gateway 700XL Desktop (Gateway-700XL)

WHAT'S HOT: The latest 700XL--the company's top-of-the-line PC--comes with a long list of high-end components. For starters, our test system caried Intel's new 875P chip set matched with a 3-GHz Pentium 4 processor and 512MB of fast DDR400 SDRAM (since we tested this system, Gateway has changed the standard configuration to include 1GB of memory for $100 more than the listed price of $3299). The new chip set uses an 800-MHz frontside bus (up from 533-MHz on previous Intel chip sets), so data can be transferred faster between the processor, the memory, and other components. Our experience seemed to bear out this claim: The system achieved a 126 score on PC WorldBench 4 tests-a 7-point boost over the last 700XL we tested.

This updated PC also includes a treasure trove of hardware and software for working with video. Its twin 250GB hard drives connected via a RAID controller appear as one massive 500GB drive with enough space for more than 50 hours of raw digital video footage--the most we've seen in a desktop. For editing your vacation masterpiece, you get Pinnacle Studio 8, a full-featured video-editing package; and Gateway adds its own well-illustrated video-editing guide. Once you're done editing, you can burn the video to DVD with the 2X DVD-R/RW drive. Another nice touch: seven rewritable DVD discs (five DVD-R and two DVD-RW) come with the system.

The videos you edit should be a treat to watch on the 18-inch Gateway FPD1830 LCD, which complements the PC's black-and-silver design. In image quality tests, colors looked vibrant in a photo test screen, a DVD movie, and games.

The ATI Radeon 9800 graphics board (with 128MB of DDR memory) contributed to the 700XL's very good graphics performance, churning out some of the highest frame rates we've seen, even at the monitor's native resolution of 1280 by 1024 pixels and 32-bit color depth. Still, we saw some lighting glitches during our tests of the popular game Unreal Tournament 2003.

The Boston Acoustics BA7900 5.1 speaker set provided superlative sound quality. It excelled at our audio tests using a DVD movie and vocal tracks: The speakers and the solidly built subwoofer sent out booming bass, crisp trebles, and roaring sound effects. Unlike other 5.1-channel speakers we've struggled with, this set didn't take an afternoon to set up, either. All connectors are color-coded to match the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card's inputs, eliminating the guesswork. Gateway seems to have corrected a glitch we noticed on earlier 700XL models: The software audio panel came configured correctly, and the speakers worked as soon as we plugged them in.

WHAT'S NOT: Unsurprisingly, considering its many features, this system comes with a hefty price tag. At $3117, it's one of the most expensive systems we have tested. Letters and fonts didn't terribly sharp on the 18-inch LCD compared with other large-screen displays we've seen. Font sizes below 7-point Arial looked a tad fuzzy, for example.

WHAT ELSE: Other features we liked in previous 700XL systems have been carried over here too, such as the easy-to-open case and the roomy interior. Our review system had two unoccupied external drive bays (for removable media drives), dual RAM sockets, and three open PCI slots. Like all systems that use dual-channel memory, the 700XL requires matching memory DIMMs, meaning that you have to replace both at once if you upgrade the memory. The eight USB 2.0 ports (two are up front) and two FireWire (IEEE 1394) ports (one up front) supply plenty of ways to connect peripherals.

UPSHOT: If you have the bucks, this top-of-the-line system offers a wealth of features for video editing and entertainment.

SUMMARY

Gateway 700XL $