HP details Athlon 64 desktop support

HP finally unveiled its long-awaited Athlon 64-based desktop at Comdex yesterday. But in something of a disappointment for AMD, it chose to base the first of a new line of gamer-oriented machines on an Intel CPU.

The Compaq Presario 8000Z is equipped with an Athlon 64 3200+, 256MB of 400MHz DDR SDRAM, 80GB of hard drive storage and a DVD-ROM drive. The machine's graphics come courtesy of a 128MB ATI Radeon 9200 card.

HP's decision to offer an Athlon 64-based machine was signalled in June, when a specification document was discovered on the manufacturer's web site. HP later said the desktop detailed in the document was a prototype intended only for the South Korean market. However, it confirmed that it "will have a future product featuring the AMD Athlon 64 processor".

Come November, and the Athlon 64-based machine is finally announced. However, HP said it has no plans to use AMD's Athlon 64 FX-51 processor, either in its mid-range Presario line or its pricier Compaq X series of games machines.

Instead, the X07 will use a 3GHz Pentium 4, while the X09 is equipped with the 3.2GHz version of that processor. The former ships with 512MB of 400MHz DDR, a 120GB hard drive, separate DVD-ROM and CD-RW optical drives and a 256MB Nvidia GeForce FX 5950 Ultra graphics card.

The X09 has the same card and hard drive, but ships with 1GB of SDRAM and separate DVD-ROM/CD-RW and DVD+RW optical units. Based on Intel's i875 chipset, the X09 offers RAID support too.

The X09 will retail in CompUSA stores for $2999. The X07 is a BestBuy product, where it will cost $2299. The 8000Z is available from a range of resellers and from HP direct for $1239. ®