HP Compaq Presario CQ5320Y

The top portion of the faceplate houses two LED lights that indicate power and disc access, and the dual-layer DVD burner sits just below them. There's also room in the expansion bay for another hard drive, and you can plug two externals or other peripherals into the dual USB 2.0 ports at the bottom. Two audio jacks for headphones and a microphone round out the front of the CQ5320Y.

Compaq Presario CQ5320Y Gateway DX4831-01e
Price $410 $559
CPU 2.81GHz AMD Athlon II X2 240 2.93GHz Intel Core i3-530
Memory 3GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM 6GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM
Graphics 256MB (shared) NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE integrated graphics chip 32MB (shared) Intel GMA X4500 integrated graphics chip
Hard drives 500GB, 7,200rpm 1TB, 7,200rpm
Optical drive dual-layer DVD burner dual-layer DVD burner
Networking 10/100 Ethernet LAN Gigabit Ethernet
Operating system Windows Vista Home Premium (64-bit) Windows Vista Home Premium (64-bit)

We'll compare the Compaq against the Gateway to illustrate what you can get in the next desktop tier up. In terms of core components, the biggest difference between the Compaq and the Gateway is the CPU. Compaq offers a slightly faster clock speed, but Gateway answers with a Core i3-530 chip that translates to faster performance, which you can see on our charts below. Otherwise, the Gateway's biggest advantage is its 1TB hard drive, which gives you twice as much storage space as the Compaq's 500GB drive. Our charts don't get into the various connectivity options available with each system, but the Gateway is the winner here as well, boasting HDMI, eSATA, and S/PDIF audio, as well as a media card reader. The Compaq offers only the most basic ports, with just a handful of USB 2.0 jacks, 5.1 analog audio, a 56k modem card, Ethernet, and no media card input.