When buying a new PC, as with anything, if it's cheap it's usually for a reason. Many mainstream computer manufacturers claim to provide 'value-for-money', unfortunately though, that's not always the case. The literature used in advertising PCs is often misleading and uses selected information to advertise the better points of a machine, but many of these parts will be sourced as cheaply as possible and the final product may not run as efficiently as a competitor's machine with a similar specification. You can see this for yourself by using a system information utility.

PC Wizard 2008 1.86 is an advanced utility designed to analyze all aspects of your systems performance. Test and benchmark your CPU, RAM and hard drive performance as well as many other useful features. Use it to identify if your computer matches the manufacturers description.

PC Wizard 2008 1.86 link. 

25 Sep 2008