Too good to be true?

Major retailers such as Wal-Mart, Circuit City, and Best Buy have been offering computers for incredibly low prices. Average consumers see such deals as being too good to pass up. This may be the case if you just plan on browsing the internet or using office applications, but it is one of the biggest downfalls for gamers that may not know that much about the inner workings of a computer. An example would be a computer that starts at $600 then after a few rebates drops down to $500. Retailers are able to sell computers this cheap because the manufacturers cut several corners on the quality and type of computer parts. Instead of a Pentium 4 processor, these computers have the slower Celeron processors. Average buyers do not know the difference between the two processors and think all Intel processors are high quality. A Celeron at 2.7 GHz is not nearly as fast as a Pentium 4 clocked at 1.8 GHz. Another part that cuts costs is the motherboard. There are only two PCI slots and no AGP slot on these low-end motherboards. An AGP slot is becoming a must for today's video cards. These computers do not even have a video card. Instead there is integrated video on the motherboard. The RAM is usually only 256 MB and it has a slow clock speed (2100 MB per second). The power supply is also of low quality. It has less capacitors than normal power supplies and not enough watts for much future upgrade ability. Remember to look closely at the system specifications before buying a computer a price that may be too good to be true.