Home > Consumer Reviews > eMachines Desktop PC with AMD Athlon(TM) Processor 2800+ (T2825)

This eMachines T2825 is power packed and breaks away from the general misconception of emachines low quality computers. First off, the case is not flimsy, it is nice and sturdy and very modern looking. The blue halo around the powerbutton is nice. The computer is very powerful, featuring a AMD Athlon XP 2800+ which runs at 2.09GHz. The 2800 moniker means it should run at about intel 2.8GHz. Also has 512mb or 333mhz ddr ram which is supported by the mainboard. The processor's FSB (Front Side Bus) and memory both run at 333mhz giving the computer good throughput. The mother board is an FIC AU31 custom board featuring the nVidia nForce2 Crush18G chipset, giving the T2825 plenty of speed and advanced features such as AGP8x, USB2.0 and Dolby 5.1 sound. The built in graphics are more than good enough for average user and light gamer, however serious graphics people will want to utilize that extra AGP 8x slot. The mother board auto switches over to the agp slot when a card is plugged into it, so you dont need to manually disable the built in GeForce4 MX. I personally recommend BFG video cards. I purchased an Asylum FX 5600 Ultra video card for my emachines T2825 and Play games such as Halo, Medal of Honor:AA, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Half Life series quite comfortably with amazing graphics detail and speed. Despite emachines past record, this new machine(in my eyes) has redeemed them from a past of failure into a real competitor with a computer I can turn into what I want it to be. I love the machine and plan to buy another emachines for my next computer in between my life of building computers. By the way, if you price out the parts in this emachine, you will see that it is a great value for some quality hardware. Hope this helps any emachines skeptics.

This emachines is VERY crash prone. This model is horrible. I purchased in 11/2003 had no problems until 12/2004 when it crashed. Since then it has crashed 2 other times. eMachines does not have good compatibility will all of their files and bundled software. There is also a compatibility issue with iTunes. Service Pack 2 may be causing all of these problems by indtroducing a compatibility issue. I would not recommend installing SP2 on any eMachines computer.

My final reccomendation: Do not buy any eMachines product, since the eMachines computer I purchased before this one (a different model) crashed as I was installing it. I got my money back, but I should have taken that as a sign of things to come.

I have read glowing reviews about this kind of emachine, but obviously not my emachine. I have had to "restore" the operating system 6 times in 9 months, twice in the last two days. Let me redefine the word 'restore." That has nothing to do with the kind of operating system restoration I was ever used to. Using the disks provided with the 2825, you have to wipe the drive clean. Yes, as in reformat, reload, and re-install everything you want to run. Oh, and when you do your updates, don't for any reason, install the new xp service pack or you'll have to re-run everything, all over again. All this so that I can run Half Life 2 - total run time in the past 2 days? One half hour.

By the way, they do offer another kind of restore disk for those who don't mind working with DOS - Since I built my first computer and programmed it in DOS, that didn't scare me. But the disk comes with NO instructions, of course, they will e-mail instructions to you, but it's hard to get e-mail - WHEN YOUR COMPUTER IS DOWN!

But you needn't worry about that, because even after you can get the instructions (on another computer of course), they refuse to help you in any way. The Woman I talked to said "we are not paid to walk you through the process" to use the original restore CD's, and not to complain.

So, this is not a complaint.

However...

it is something for you to consider.

I purchased this machine in November, 2003, and have yet to have any major problems with it. Never has crashed without a reason, usually one of my own doing, and I have never had to use the restore disks. This is not for lack of use or tinkering either.

I use this computer nearly everyday for several hours. Often it will run for about 10 to 15 hours a day, 2 or 3 times a week, rendering video projects. I have also added a PCI TV Tuner card, a 200 GB HDD, and a DVD burner to replace the DVD-ROM drive. The only issue I have had with these additions is a conflict with the TV Tuner's software and a video driver, but this no fault of the machine. I plan to add RAM, a Firewire card, and a dual-head video card in the near future, and anticipate no problems.

Gaming has been a breeze with NVidia's GeForce integrated GPU. It is compatible with practically all but some of the newest released games which require much beefier hardware. I actually had some games that aquired graphical glitches after updating the video driver, but a rollback put everything back to normal.

My only regret is not having researched the MB in advance because I have no way of upgrading the processor without a new MB.

All in all, this has been a great machine for someone who uses their computer more heavily than the average user. I recommend eMachines to my friends and family over all other computer manufactures but one, in which case price usually becomes the deciding factor. I will deffinately buy from eMachines again.

Here is my six month check up for this computer. After 6 months of daily use (6+ hours daily) the computer is still running great. I have burned it in (for anyone who doesnt know that is when you run the cpu for an extended period of time to test the reliability of the computer) and that went wonderfully. High priority for 10 hours and no problems. No hardware problems whatsoever. Pop in a good graphics card (noone should use integrated video GPU's unless you only want to run Microsoft word) and you have yourself an extremely capable machine. The nforce2 chipset motherboard FIC AU31 combined with the AMD Athlon XP 2800+ makes for an extremely quick machine. At 6 months doing great. These new emachines lineup's are really quality computers. The manufacturers involved, FIC, Western Digital (HD), NVidia etc make this a great choice for a powerful cost efficient computer.