Atlanta III Series

Mitac's Atlanta III Series PC is an inexpensive dual-core solution charged with the task of boosting your productivity. Its Pentium D 930 CPU and 1GB of DDR2 RAM makes it a suitable machine for multitasking and the supplied 19in widescreen monitor allows for two application windows to be easily situated side by side.

Don't expect too much raw power out of this machine though, its World Bench 5 score of 84 makes it slightly slower than AMD Athlon 64 X2-based machines in the same price bracket, and its slow pace is also a reflection of its integrated Intel graphics chip, which uses system RAM to process graphics data. Luckily, the machine does have a PCI Express graphics slot so a better graphics card can be installed if you feel you need more speed or want to play some taxing 3-D games.

The rest of the system configuration is fairly standard: it comes with a double-layer DVD burner and a 160GB Serial ATA II hard drive. The hard drive capacity is perhaps a little low for a machine in this price range - we would have liked at least 200GB. Physically, the components reside in a deceptively roomy ATX tower case, whose front panel is reminiscent of late 90s Compaq machines. It looks good, has front-loading USB ports and easy access to a memory card reader. On the inside, there are eight total drive bays, four memory slots, the aforementioned PCI Express slot, as well as two PCI slots for expansion. The CPU is cooled by a stock Intel heatsink, which is fed cool air from a side-mounted duct.