Why "Dragon," you ask? The name is not caprice on the part of Cyberpower. Like "Maui," AMD's media platform, "Dragon" is another of AMD's synergistic compilations of parts, this time combining the new Phenom II processors, motherboards using AMD's 790 chipset, and Radeon HD 4800-series graphics cards. The end result is cohesive set of components that AMD hopes will be the equivalent of a computing race car in a box. When the Dragon arrived, there was a puncture through its outer box, through an inch and a half of gray foam, and a break in the skin on the inner packing box. The lift from the floor to our test bench revealed a rattle inside the Thermaltake Element S midtower case, but a quick visual check showed no apparent damage to the case itself.

Gateway's DX4200-11 is an example of what spectacular values can be found in desktop computers. The system is based around the AMD Phenom X4 processor. While this isn't as powerful as the Intel Core 2 Quad processors, it does provide a solid experience especially for those looking to use it for heavy multitasking or desktop video. Speaking of video, the Radeon HD integrated graphics are a definitely step up as it even allows low resolution casual PC gaming.

Since the launch of Intel's champion chip Conroe almost three years ago, AMD has been hard pressed to throw a punch, much less win a round in the highly competitive world of pugilistic processor pounding. So a PC-Mega Test win across three price categories bloodys Intel's nose somewhat and indicates things are trending up for AMD, with the advent of Phenom II helping the firm claw its way back into the ring.

This system might be unique for its ability to serve up digital media, but it's also significantly slower than competing PCs in its price range. It can't even keep up with the $900 Dell XPS 430 121B. This HP is certainly fast enough to provide a quality HD video experience. It can also play some games, although we're surprised that it wasn't able to turn in a better score on our forgiving Unreal Tournment 3 test. Overall we'd look elsewhere if your primary concern is system performance and/or gaming capability.

If you are gaming why would you buy a PC from one of the big OEMs?

Turns out, the years of stories about back-room deals regarding Dell and AMD finally coming together really didn't materialize into anything massive. Dell introduced their first AMD-based systems in 2006, and well, Intel didn't crumble. Having made their way into the final large scale OEM, AMD definitely earned a feather in their cap, but the market situation hasn't changed by any real amount. To this day, Intel based systems make up the lion's share of Dell's sales figures, whereas AMD continues to struggle and fight to keep itself alive on a quarter by quarter basis. Nevertheless, the Dell and AMD partnership has continued over these past three years, and we're finally starting to see Dell get a little feistier with the AMD hardware at their disposal.