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I just want the more powerful of the two:

Choice 1: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Gateway+-+Desktop+with+AMD+Phenom%26%23153%3B+II+Quad-Core+Processor/9698936.p?id=1218153428687&skuId=9698936

Choice 2: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Pavilion+Desktop+with+AMD+Phenom%26%23153%3B+II+Quad-Core+Processor/9694506.p?id=1218150609828&skuId=9694506

I can't post more than one hyperlink since I am a new user, so please add bestbuy domain name before choice 2.

The latter choice is a bit more expensive but not by much so I don't care about that. As for what I intend to use my machine for, just regular web surfing, light gaming, web development related work, etc. But that doesn't really matter, of these two I just want to know which is the better more powerful system and which you would buy if you were in my position.

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Both are way overkill for web surfing and web development, and neither will play video games very well. – Phoshi May 22 '10 at 23:21
Sorry, but shopping type questions are discouraged on SU. meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/36056/not-the-shopping – random♦ May 23 '10 at 8:18
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closed as too localized by Phoshi, Sathya♦, random♦ May 23 '10 at 8:17

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2 Answers

up vote 4 down vote

They both easily meet the requirements you've lined out. The couple differences I could find:

  • The HP has DDR3 RAM, which will likely give you a very slight performance boost.
  • The HP has more software listed (not sure if that makes a difference to you)
  • The Gateway has (AFAICT) dedicated graphics memory, whereas the HP uses shared memory. You'll probably get slightly better graphics performance on the Gateway, plus you get to keep all your RAM. The difference will probably be hardly noticeable unless you've got some graphics intensive gaming going on, and the odds of needing all 8GB of RAM is pretty slight for what you've listed.
  • The Gateway comes with a TV Tuner card, if you want to record TV shows to it.
  • The Gateway also has HDMI output, if your monitor accepts it.

Overall, the Gateway is probably a slightly better unit for multimedia usage, and the HP will probably be a little bit better for computation-intensive tasks. You can pick depending on how you expect to use them...

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up vote 1 down vote

Choice 2 no questions asked.

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Wouldn't it be nice if you explained why? Saves someone else repeating your effort, and the asker may find out something they hadn't yet considered/understood. – sblair May 22 '10 at 23:50
Too lazy lol.... – Notorious Arab May 23 '10 at 4:36
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