Emachines has made the move to 64-bits.
The PC manufacturer and seller, best known for its low-price desktops, this week quietly introduced the T6000, a desktop built around Advanced Micro Devices' 64-bit capable Athlon 64 processor. The T6000, which is currently available at a small number of Best Buy stores and via that retailer's Web site, offers AMD's Athlon 64 3200+ chip, along with a helping of high-end components. The $1,299 desktop also comes with 512MB of 400MHz double data rate synchronous dynamic RAM (DDR SDRAM) and a 160GB hard drive with an extra-large, 8MB buffer for data, which helps boost performance.
With the release of the new desktop, Emachines becomes one of the first brand-name PC companies to offer the Athlon 64 chip, released in September, on retail shelves in the United States. Hewlett-Packard, the largest seller of PCs at retail in the United States, offers the AMD chip in a Compaq Presario 8000T desktop. However, that system is only available direct from the company. Though most desktops sold at retail in the United States are priced below the $1,000 mark, according to The NPD Group, a relatively healthy market still exists for higher-priced machines that offer more power for gaming or multimedia tasks.
Emachines, HP, Dell, Gateway and others are aiming for those markets with their Athlon 64 desktops, gaming machines and Media Center PCs, all of which carry higher-than-average prices, but also include features designed to attract buyers who are willing to pay them. The latest Emachines PC also arrives in time for the holiday shopping season, during which consumers are often willing to spend more on PCs they intend to use for multimedia, such as editing videos, or gaming.
News source: C|net
