Price dings Dell's all-AMD XPS 625 gaming desktop

It's tempting to write off efforts like AMD's Dragon platform as hollow marketing. After all, building a Dragon platform PC requires that the CPU, the chipset, and the graphics card all come from AMD. We actually find some value in the AMD OverDrive Utility that comes with a Dragon-qualified system, such as the Dell XPS 625, as it gives you a fairly intuitive and safe means to overclock your PC.

Dell's AMD-based XPS 625 gaming PC

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET Networks)

Even if we like what Dragon has to offer, we're only lukewarm on the Dell XPS 625 due to its price. Our $1,499 review unit did well enough in the lab, and boasted some impressive expandability. But then we found two comparable PCs for $1,250: one that offered almost the exact, overclockable AMD-specs, another powered by Intel's Core i7 chips that offered comparable performance, if not the overclocking.

That left Dell the XPS 600-series case, a 750-watt power supply, and Alienware's LightFX light customization software as its primary advantages among other midrange gaming PCs. We can give or take the software, but we like the case well enough, and the 750-watt PSU gives more breathing room for upgrades than its competition. But given that Dell wants an extra $250 for those features, we'd rather put that money toward a second graphics card and a larger hard drive.

Get the full low-down in our review of the Dell XPS 625.