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Alienware Aurora 7500

78

Good

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Pros
Ample room for expansion
Cons
Tricky to replace the chassis' cover

Performance: Superior: 91
Features: Good: 75
Design: Very Good: 85

Find out how these scores, and their relative weights, combine to produce the PC World Rating.

Performance
ACD Systems ACDSee	462
Adobe Photoshop	304
Adobe Premiere	335
Ahead Nero	350
Discreet 3ds Max DirectX	238
Discreet 3ds Max OpenGL	296
Microsoft Office XP	519
Mozilla	316
Multitasking	386
Musicmatch Jukebox	448
Return to Castle Wolfenstein, 1024 by 768, 16-Bit	161.27
Return to Castle Wolfenstein, 1024 by 768, 32-Bit	153.6
Return to Castle Wolfenstein, 1280 by 1024, 32-Bit	151.07
Roxio VideoWave	253
Unreal Tournament, 1024 by 768, 16-Bit	420.19
Unreal Tournament, 1024 by 768, 32-Bit	389.16
Unreal Tournament, 1280 by 1024, 32-Bit	345.55
Windows Media Encoder	262
WinZip	337
World Bench 5 Score	118
World Bench 5 Word Score	Superior

Performance
WorldBench 5: Performance word scores reflect comparisons of PCs in the same category (power or value) running the same operating system. See Your Guide to the Top 100 for more details.	Very Good: 118 (Windows XP Professional)
Base configuration	Very Good
CPU	2.4-GHz Athlon 64 X2 4800+
System memory	1GB of DDR400 SDRAM
Hard drive (GB): Total capacity. May represent multiple hard drives.	320GB (RAID)
Monitor size and model	20-inch BenQ Q20U3 LCD
Graphics: Most integrated graphics systems use the PC's main RAM.	256MB ATI Radeon X850 XT
Case type: Vertical cases are towers (over 20 inches), midsize towers (15.5 to 20 inches), or minitowers (under 15.5 inches). Horizontal cases are desktops (5 inches or taller) or compacts (under 5 inches).	Tower
Open bays, slots	4 internal and 3 externally accessible bays, 5 slots
Extra features	Good
Removable-media drives	16X DVD±RW DL drive, media-card reader
Sound card	Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
Speakers	Logitech Z-5300e
Communications	Network adapter, 7 USB 2.0 ports, 2 FireWire ports
Productivity software	None
Other	N/A
Graphics quality: Based on new testing begun in the November 2002 issue. Insufficient data for systems tested in previous months.	Outstanding
Setup and ease of use	Very Good
Vendor's reliability/service: A vendor's score is based on surveys of PC World readers. Vendors receiving insufficient data scores did not generate enough responses to our most recent survey for us to make a determination.	Better/Insufficient data
: Lifetime refers to the lifetime of the product.	One-year parts and labor warranty; 24-hour daily toll-free support during warranty period.

What You Should Know about the Aurora 7500

A PC With Little Included RAM Can Do Light Work

This system offers less than 1GB of memory, which is the bare minimum that any full-featured new computer should include. Whether this amount of RAM is optimal for you depends on the PC's operating system: Windows Vista and Apple's Mac OS X don't run well with less than 1GB, Windows XP is fine with 512MB and not too bad with 384MB, and Windows 98 is good with 256MB. Depending on the distribution, Linux can run with as little as 128MB, but most Linux users are better off with at least 512MB--and 1GB is better.

The more installed memory your PC has, the more applications you can run smoothly at once, and the better the system will perform. Upgrading memory in a desktop after you purchase the PC is a snap, but usually it's worthwhile to buy the amount of memory you want preinstalled with the system.