New eMachines desktops hit the shelves

eMachines announced three new budget PCs.

(Credit: CNET)

eMachines has become so regular with its quarterly refreshes, it might be more newsworthy if they didn't announce new systems every three months. But rest assured, if you head to your friendly-neighborhood desktop retailer next week (and possibly even today), you'll find three new eMachines budget PCs on the shelves: the $500 T5230, the $450 T5062, and the $400 T3616. All come with a $50 mail-in rebate as well.

We've been lukewarm on eMachines the past few releases, mostly due to questionable CPU selection. This time, though, we're particularly impressed with the T5230 and its Athlon 64 X2 4400+ dual chip. We'll have our full review of that posted today or Monday, but our early impression, based on our benchmarks, is that eMachines has a performance coup on its hands with this system. The other two we're less high on, mostly because they still cling to single core chips.

[nichts925]

Oh come on

You can't possibly be mad about getting iffy performance from a $400 computer. They are clearly not marketed toward people who need a powerful system.