
I recently upgraded from a Windows XP PC, by buying this in a bare bones kit. Performance is more than ample, with an Intel i3-530 processor. If you know about Windows 7 x64 Home Premium performance scores, the following is helpful: Without a video card, my base score is between 4.8 and 4.9. My Multimedia score is 5.2, and my processor score is 6.9. Disk scores will vary more, for each build, but mine is 5.9 with a Hitachi disk.
This is more than sufficient to run high-end software, and High Definition Video (which is why I upgraded), and I have noticed a huge performance boost, over my Windows XP Pentium 4 Dell machine, although that is like comparing a horse to an automobile.
If I chose to improve the video performance, I could get a much higher base score by investing in a high-end video card, but that's just the thing; I don't need to, unless I want to play high-performance video games. My system cost was in the middle three digits, by the way, and is practically future proof, except for not having USB 3.
Hardware Features include:
* 2 memory slots (fill with 2gb sticks for 4gb ram, and you'll be good to go)
* HD audio and sPDIF
* support for DDR3 1666 (I find that DDR3 1066 is sufficient)
* D-sub (VGA) - DVI - HDMI on motherboard
* 2 PCI-e (1 at 4x the other at 16x - supports crossfire); 2 PCI slots
* 6 SATA 3GB
* 128MB Shared ram for on-board video
Software:
Comes with an excellent overclocking and power saving suite (you might ask: is it wise to power save while overclocking? Answer: It works fine for me, with the stock BIOS.)
Comes with Norton Internet Security 2010 (OEM - 90 day subscription trial)
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Gigabyte Micro ATX Motherboard GA-H55M-S2H.