Gateway 700XL Desktop (Gateway-700XL)

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.