Antialiasing and anisotropic filtering are disabled during our 1,024x768 tests and are set to 4X and 8X, respectively, during our 1,600x1,200 tests. We use Unreal to measure a desktop's performance with the DirectX 8.0 (DX8) interface at a 32-bit color depth and at resolutions of 1,024x768 and 1,600x1,200. To measure 3D gaming performance, CNET Labs uses Epic Games' Unreal Tournament 2003, widely used as an industry-standard benchmark.
In addition, we would have preferred a wireless keyboard and mouse to the included wired units, since a Media Center PC isn't necessarily going to be rest atop a desk with you sitting directly in front of it. The company claims that our preproduction review unit wasn't shipped with the usual care, but the fact remains that one of the panels snapped off during shipping, and the slide-down panel covering the media-card reader refused to rest flush against the case when closed. We expected a more polished look on such a high-end system, especially from image-conscious Sony. A front-panel media-card reader makes it easy to import photos and MP3s, although we dislike the cheap plastic panels Sony uses to hide the drives and the media-card reader.
You'll be able to clear up some hard drive space with the RA820G's double-layer DVD+RW drive, which can fit an entire uncompressed movie onto one (still very expensive) disc. The 200GB hard drive provides ample storage, and you have room to add two more SATA drives, should you become a TV-archiving junkie. The system ships with two 512MB DIMMs of PC3200 memory, and there are two empty memory slots, should you want to add more memory later. The ATI graphics card occupies the RA820G's lone 16X PCIe slot, a 56Kbps modem takes up one of the two 1X PCIe slots, and the TV tuner card occupies one of the three PCI slots. The RA820G comes pretty well outfitted, but it does give you room to add an extra hard drive or two. Look at the slightly pricier VAIO RA810G if you plan to use the system for casual gaming it gives you a bump up in the graphics card, as well as a slightly faster processor and a larger hard drive. With ATI's low-end PCI Express (PCIe) graphics card, the Radeon X300, the RA820G is a good choice for running most graphics apps aside from the latest games. Its SysMark 2004 score of 194 is right on a par with that of other systems in its class, and its 225 score on the graphics-laden Internet-content-creation portion of the test speaks well of its multimedia capabilities.
With Intel's 3.2GHz Pentium 4 540 processor on the 915P Express chipset, 1GB of 400MHz DDR memory, and a 200GB Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive, the system can handle almost any multimedia task, including recording TV, burning DVDs, editing photos, and downloading and playing music. And at $1,700, it's one of the lowest-cost models in Sony's R series. You won't need a more powerful Media Center PC, however, than the Sony VAIO RA820G.