HP Presario 8000z

HP Compaq Presario 8000Z Review

by Paul Jasper

- The Compaq Presario 8000Z, the latest version of HP's premium home system, is a powerful performer. It can now be had with a 2.2-GHz Athlon 64 3400+ CPU, a step up from its still-available predecessor. That processor helped boost our otherwise similarly configured review system by a significant 12 points on our benchmark tests. This 8000Z earned a score of 141 in our PC WorldBench 4 test--a virtual tie with the similarly configured Sys Performance 3400+/64. The only systems to outperform the 8000Z were those equipped with AMD's Athlon 64 FX processors, often found in gaming systems--and even then only by a slight margin. The rest of our 8000Z's configuration is nicely matched to the unit's fast, general-purpose processor. It came with 1 gigabyte of DDR400 system memory. It also had two 80GB Serial ATA disk drives in a RAID 0 configuration that stripes your files across both drives for maximum performance, an 8X DVD+RW burner, and a 256MB ATI Radeon 9600 Pro graphics board. If you feel the need to upgrade beyond this configuration, however, the 8000Z will disappoint you: Despite being housed in a slimline midsize tower, both Serial ATA connections are taken and all the drive bays are occupied. Adding additional cards wouldn't be a problem, though: Three PCI slots are available.