The Bottom Line
Gateway's 500XL provides a solid all around performance system with excellent multimedia capacilities if one is willing to spend the money.
Pros
- Good Overall Performance
- Excellent Audio
- DVD Burner
Cons
- Expensive
Description
- Intel Pentium 4 2.6GHz with 800 MHz Bus on a i865G Based Motherboard
- 512MB PC3200 DDR Memory (2 DIMMs for Dual Channel)
- 80 Gigabyte Hard Drive
- DVD-RW Burner Optical Drive
- Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2
- NVIDIA GeForceFX 5200 Graphics Processor with 128MB Memory
- Intel 10/100 Ethernet and v.92 56Kbps Modem
- 15" LCD Monitor
- Eight USB 2.0 Ports
- Windows XP Home Operating System
Guide Review - Gateway 500XL
8/19/03 - The Gateway 500 XL is a fairly expensive mainstream desktop system, but it is a solid system for the price. It is based on the latest Intel Pentium 4 2.6 GHz processor with 800MHz bus and matched with 512MB PC3200 dual channel memory to provide solid base performance. Audio is top notch with the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 card. Video is also respectable due to the NVIDIA GeForceFX 5200. While many competiting systems offer two optical drives, the 500XL only comes with a single DVD-RW burner, but it can read and write to most all media types. The system by itself does not have any native FireWire ports although the SB Audigy 2 should supply the system with at least one FireWire port.
