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Photograph: Rick Rizner, Chris Manners
HP Pavilion A1250n Desktop (Athlon 64 X2 3800+, 1GB DDR, 250GB, DVDRW DL, Windows Media Center)
- Spec Navigator
- Processor
- Memory
- Storage
- Multimedia
- Software
- Optical Drives
- Expansion Slots
- Display
- Modem / Networking
- Case
- Other Features
- Interface Connection
Multimedia
| Audio Adapter Model | Integrated Realtek AC'97 Audio |
| Audio Channels | 5.1 surround |
| Video chipset | Integrated ATI Radeon Xpress 200 |
| Video bus | Integrated |
Software
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition |
| Included Software |
|
Optical Drives
| Optical Drive Speed | 2.4 |
| Optical Drive Type | DVD+R DL/DVD±RW |
| Second Optical Drive Speed | 16 |
| Second Optical Drive Type | DVD-ROM |
Expansion Slots
| Open PCI Express X16 Slots | 1 |
| Number of PCI slots | 3 |
| Open PCI Express X1 Slots | 0 |
| PCI Express Slots | 1 |
| Slots | 3 |
| Other Storage | Five-in-one media-card reader |
- Lab Tested
- How We Test Desktops »
Pros
Good for basic media tasks
Cons
Upgrades needed for true MC PC tasks
Bottom Line
This Media Center PC manages music and images competently, but needs upgrades to be a useful home entertainment center.
HP Pavilion a1250n Desktop PC
Pavilion A1250n Desktop (Athlon 64 X2 3800+, 1GB DDR, 250GB, DVDRW DL, Windows Media Center) Review, by Kirk Steers February 15, 2006
Priced at $1229 (as of January 17, 2006) with a 17-inch LCD display, HP's Pavilion a1250n is a great example of a value Media Center PC that's more comfortable in the home office than in the living room. The system lacks the sophisticated graphics card, TV tuner, and remote control that come standard on more-expensive Media Center PCs. Nevertheless, it should work well as a home-office PC that can also manage music, photos, and graphics files.
Equipped with a 2-GHz Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+ CPU, 2GB of DDR RAM, and a 250GB Seagate Barracuda hard drive, the Pavilion a1250n posted an impressive score of 94 on our WorldBench 5 test suite. Though most software programs today can't exploit the benefits of a dual-core processor when run by themselves, people who multitask--playing music and games at the same time, for example--should see performance benefits when using this machine.
Notwithstanding the dual-core processor, the Pavilion a1250n depends on integrated ATI Radeon Xpress 200 graphics, which use system RAM instead of dedicated RAM. As a result, the system isn't the best choice for high-powered games or applications that use fast-moving 3D graphics. On our Unreal Tournament graphics test at 1024 by 768 resolution with 32-bit color, the a1250n's frame rate score of 55 stands as the third-lowest we've yet seen. Older and less-demanding games, however, should play well on this system; game play on Return to Castle Wolfenstein, for example, flowed smoothly. Images looked sharp, with clear delineation between different tones and colors.
DVD movies ran without jitters, and even fast-moving images looked clearly defined on the 17-inch HP vs17 LCD display that accompanied our review system. Small (6.8-point) text was quite legible at the monitor's native resolution of 1280 by 768. The monitor accepts analog VGA input only, however; digital DVI usually produces sharper images.
The case's silver surface, slightly curved edges, and white plastic front soften the appearance of the slightly squat midsize tower case. The a1250n includes a dual-layer 4X DVD+/-RW drive, a 16X DVD-ROM drive, and a nine-in-one media card reader. The DVD+/-RW drive uses HP's LightScribe technology to print labels and images on special LightScribe DVD and CD media that typically cost just a little over $1 per disk.
A small door beneath the front-mounted card reader slides down to reveal two USB ports; a FireWire port; and headphone, microphone, and line-in jacks. The back of the system accommodates four more USB 2.0 ports, two ethernet ports, and three analog audio ports that support 5.1 surround sound. A coaxial (RCA jack) digital-audio SP/DIF port sits above the analog audio ports. But unlike many Media Center PCs, the system lacks an optical Toslink SP/DIF port. A DVI port is also missing, so if you want the superior quality of digital video output for a television or DVI-only LCD, you'll have to add a graphics card with DVI output.
If you decide to add a graphics card or TV tuner to the a1250n, you'll find that reaching the one open PCI Express X16 slot and three open PCI slots is pretty simple. Likewise, in case the system's 250GB hard drive fills up quickly, the readily accessible hard drive chassis offers room for two additional hard drives--though there's only one open SATA connector. There's no room for more optical drives.
As usual, HP comes through with a very user-friendly design. Excellent manuals and setup guides include separate pamphlets for basic use, upgrades, troubleshooting, and setup. The system comes equipped with a basic mouse and a sturdy keyboard with big, easy-to-reach multimedia and control buttons.
Upshot: The Pavilion a1250n is a good Media Center PC for managing music and images, but you'll have to upgrade it before it becomes a useful home entertainment center or media hub for a TV.
Kirk Steers
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PCWorld Lab Results
- Rating Breakdown
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78
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78
-
78
- See Complete Lab Results »
78
51Performance
| ACD Systems ACDSee | 585 |
| Adobe Photoshop | 367 |
| Adobe Premiere | 411 |
| Ahead Nero | 490 |
| Discreet 3ds Max DirectX | 340 |
| Discreet 3ds Max OpenGL | 666 |
| Doom 3 with AA, 1024 by 768, 32-Bit | 2.8 |
| Doom 3 with AA, 1280 by 1024, 32-Bit | 2.3 |
| Doom 3, 1024 by 768, 32-Bit | 8.97 |
| Doom 3, 1280 by 1024, 32-Bit | 7.4 |
| Far Cry with AA, 1024 by 768, 32-Bit | 9.37 |
| Far Cry with AA, 1280 by 1024, 32-Bit | 5.69 |
| Far Cry, 1024 by 768, 32-Bit | 20.15 |
| Far Cry, 1280 by 1024, 32-Bit | 13.3 |
| Microsoft Office XP | 563 |
| Mozilla | 441 |
| Multitasking | 521 |
| Musicmatch Jukebox | 535 |
| Overall Graphics Comments | 1600 x 1200 is not supported. |
| Overall Graphics Score | Fair |
| Return to Castle Wolfenstein, 1024 by 768, 16-Bit | 48.2 |
| Return to Castle Wolfenstein, 1024 by 768, 32-Bit | 38.9 |
| Return to Castle Wolfenstein, 1280 by 1024, 32-Bit | 25.3 |
| Roxio VideoWave | 290 |
| Unreal Tournament, 1024 by 768, 16-Bit | 104.19 |
| Unreal Tournament, 1024 by 768, 32-Bit | 55.53 |
| Unreal Tournament, 1280 by 1024, 32-Bit | 33.87 |
| Windows Media Encoder | 321 |
| WinZip | 411 |
| World Bench 5 Score | 94 |
| World Bench 5 Word Score | Very Good |
User Reviews
Average User Reviews for HP Pavilion A1250n Desktop (Athlon 64 X2 3800+, 1GB DDR, 250GB, DVDRW DL, Windows Media Center)
1 Review Add your own »
- Latest User Reviews 1 review
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Reviewed by: dmholt57
Duration of ownership: 10 Months
Strengths: AMD speed and stability, make this machine bullet-proof. Easy restore process from the D:\ partition, and support from HP has allways been a reason for me to buy their products. With the instant support with a live tech, you can't go wrong with this system. The price is now down in the 799.00 range without a monitor, with plenty of room for expansion as you can afford.
Weaknesses: Integrated graphics card should be updated to pci-e x16 for super video, streaming video is also limited by your internet connection speed though.
Overall: Support that can't be beat, a tidy package with room for growth, and enough speed to burn cds and play music at the same time. Large Hd space for pics and music, and the software bundle isn't too sparse. Chat with an online HP tech is just a few clicks away, whether you want to know what you can upgrade or how to do something, they seem genuinely happy to help. I wish all my friends had HP / AMD machines, most others have some pretty annoying update software, HP got it right!!!
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User Reviews From Around the Web
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Reviewed by: AzureDrag0n1
Strengths: Nice performance so long as it works.
Weaknesses: Powersupply is too weak.Components are unreliable.
Overall: After 1 year of use every component in the computer began to fail. RAM failure. Powersupply is not good enough. BIOS failure. Terrible support from HP. Video card is not good enough. You are not going to be doing much external booting without a floppy drive in case something goes wrong either.
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Reviewed by: rob356
Strengths: Very Fast performance and Startup.
Weaknesses: Built in graphics card.
Overall: This a great computer for fast performance and it is a great choice if you are planning to upgrade to Windows Vista. The one thing I disliked was the graphics card. I would recommend upgrading it and getting another video card installed.
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Reviewed by: Pop4
Strengths: VGA/DVD ready with integrated ATi-PcieXpress 200M graphic chipset.
Weaknesses: X300, X1300, X1600 or x1800XL desired display upgrade for DVI/SV(NFSC)TV-out
Overall: 10000rpm SATA 250 HDD could enable the locked potential of this price point Media Center console. HP built for the storage media consumer. Monitor not included ($50 Rebate). Consumer intrest.
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Reviewed by: georgekn3mp
Strengths: Dual Core AMD X2 3800+; Price; 250 GB SATA-1; LightScribe DVD/RW
Weaknesses: Integrated Radeon Xpress200 graphics
Overall: This PC worked fine out of the box, very fast over a broadband Internet connection (Cable Modem/Ethernet). Lots of software PLUS MCE 2005! Most bundled "test" software gave a 60-day trial such as Office 2003 and NAV 2005.The hard drive tested fast (and big enough to start with), as does the Dual Core X2 proc and the DVD writer. The Light Scribe function takes about 30 minutes to burn a "high" quality image, and looks like a black-and-white CD label with gold tinting.Of course trying to play Call Of Duty 2 or anything newer than Doom3 was slow, but that was easily upgraded.Step One was: finding a good PCI-Ex16 graphics card that was affordable and didn't require too much power from the 300-WATT PS included in this PC.I found and bought a 6800GS 256MB card. Step Two: Installed it, plugged in the molex power connector, and it works GREAT, and my benchmarks went up 10X in graphics and 4-6X in overall system speed! (WITHOUT UPGRADING THE POWER SUPPLY.)From around 3000 in 3DMark03 to 11000. Step Three: Disabled the second DVD-ROM drive and replaced it on the IDE cable (NO OTHER IDE slots open!) with an older 60 GB EIDE drive. That now sits on the same secondary controller as the DVD-RW.Step Four: To make it a TRUE Media Center (or HTPC)...have to get a TV tuner. HP says an internal tuner is NOT supported but I have seen others say they work ok. I am looking for a good external HD-TV tuner for the USB ports (lots of USB 2 on here!) or FireWire.Then it would be a true Media PC, and for a total of about $1200 spent ($800 PC, $250 Video, $150 HD tuner). I couldn't have built a dual-core AMD PC at THAT time for close to that price...but now that Socket 939 X2's will drop soon because of AM2...looks like a processor jump to 4800+ may be in the budget then!
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Reviewed by: Thule
Strengths: Dual core 64 bit processing, 250 gig HD, DVD+/- burner with lightscribe and second DVD drive, smart card reader, many USB ports, media center software
Weaknesses: None to date for my uses, some might complain of shared memory video.
Overall: I am a fairly heavy computer user, but my occupation is writing and research, not graphics, so bear that in mind during this review. I can not comment on high end graphics processing. This computer is loaded, both in terms of hardware and software. I set it up with only three problems, only one of which I would consider a negative towards HP. First, it did not detect my Logitech MX-1000 mouse for a few days, so I was not able to configure that until it finally registered (no apparent reason for delay, plugged into USB port). Second, it was not loaded with the driver for my Xerox docuprint P8 laser printer, but it is about four years old. Installed from web and works fine. Third, and this is my only gripe with HP, it does not come with system restore disks, user has to burn these. I purchased DVD-R discs and was preparing to do the ONE TIME ONLY burn when I happened to read the details, finding out that the system restore discs can only be burned on DVD+R discs. This was not clear and not in any of the "Using your new computer" info, so someone could have been SOL on that one. On the plus side, this has worked extremely well, media center is interesting, but I have not done much but load music and play CDs. HP online support is quick and responsive but it took a couple weeks for them to email the transcipts of the support chat? I have played Deus Ex on the machine (oldie but a goodie) and it is without problems. My browsing experience will likely change once I move and get broadband in a month, but even with dial up it performs well for my needs. AOL software is a little buggy, but that is not a reflection of the computer. I have downloaded photos from digital camera, attached external hard drive and used USB flash memory, all without any problems. I would recommend this product, for the many extras, full features, reliability (to date) and customer support. I did purchase the additional 4-year warranty through Circuit City, as I hope this unit to last many years with 64-bit processors.
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