Hardware Geeks

Last week HP Loaned me their Elite e9250 Pavilion desktop which features a Intel Core i5-750 processor, 6 Gigs of memory, NVIDIA GeForce GT 2200 1GB, and of course Windows 7 64-bit.

I only had about a week with the system and since that normally isn’t enough time to fully gauge how well a system can perform, I decided to make it my main machine for the time I had it so that I could spend as much time on it as I could.

The e9250 has a similar design to previous HP Pavilion desktops with minor differences. For example it has the 15 in 1 memory card reader at the top of the system like previous Pavilions. But now it has an HDD and Wi-Fi indicator to the right of the memory card slots and to the left of the slots are also two USB ports.

While HP Pavilions in the past have had two USB ports on the front of the case, they typically were hidden behind a door. This was cool but if you owned a flip camera or any bulky device, that door got in the way when connecting to the USB ports. This made the USB ports unusable unless you used some sort of USB cable extender.  So moving the USB ports up top is a big plus for me.

There is also an expansion bay for an HP Pocket Media drive. Which will come in Handy when using the Easy Backup button. But any external or internal HDD will work with the HP Easy Backup.

The first thing I did was uninstall all the preloaded software with the exception of Norton 2010 which I like. I then installed the day to day software I typically use. For those curious I use AIM, Live Messenger, FileZilla, Office 2007, Adobe Air (FedEx Desktop and Twitterific), and Dropbox.

After all that was installed, the system handled itself as if there was nothing installed. In the past I would recommend reformatting the drive and do a clean install of the OS but HP and other OEMS have cut back on the crapware they install on their systems and I no longer think that is necessary.

Excel, Power Point, Outlook and Word all loaded quickly. I was able to multi task without any noticeable system slowdown, which is crucial if you are a heavy multi-tasker.
The system handled all of my day to day apps easily. I wouldn’t have expected anything less than what I got. But what I really wanted to test was how well it was to game on the system.

So I installed the four games I tend to play the most. Crysis, Flight Simulator X, The Sims 3 and WoW. Out of those four games the most resource intensive one is Crysis followed by Flight Simulator.

It handled Cysis beautifully and a lot of credit for that goes to the GeForce GT 2200. The graphics were amazing and while I am not a huge NVIDIA Fan I have to give them props because the GT2200 satisfied my craving for amazing gaming! (Yes I was trying to rhyme)

Playing Crysis with all its settings high is no easy feat. The system also handled Flight Simulator, the Sims 3 and WoW beautifully.

If you are a huge Sims fan, when playing the Sims 3 on this system I noticed no lag. If you played the sims you may have noticed when moving your character around a room with a lot of items in it, the system can begin to lag. I never experienced that with the e9250.

I wanted to run some PC Mark and 3D Mark test on the system but both kept giving me scores that did not seem accurate, so I didn’t want to post them. I suspect that I have some driver issue on the system that was causing the odd results. If I am able to fix the problem before I send the system back to HP I will update this post with the results.

Overall HP has given us a great desktop, but I for one would like one without the expansion bay for the Pocket Media Drive.

But if you are on the market for a new system the e9250 is one I think you should definitely look into as I think it is perfect for the gamer in all of us. The e9259 has a medium form factor which would make it a great system for someone in a small apartment or a college student in a dorm. It would also make a great day to day family computer as well.

The HP Pavilion e9250 has a starting price of $799 the system I tested will cost you $964.99.

For more information visit http://www.hp.com

Post Tags: gaming  review  hp  intel  nvidia  pavilion  i5 

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