System Summaries
Taking the complete system recommendations, what sort of damage to your wallet are we talking about? First, let's make it clear that these are systems that
we would want - we put together all the parts without any consideration of meeting a specific budget. For the High-End setup, we threw out almost all restraints and picked out the parts that we all lust after when we're not busy reviewing other hardware. The Mid-Range was built by making some sensible downgrades to keep the price in check, but it should still pack quite a punch. You can also find a middle ground on many of the parts, so if the High-End is too expensive, but the Mid-Range just isn't powerful enough, going with a few parts from each range is definitely an option. As far as the AMD vs. Intel debate goes, we prefer the AMD setup right now, but dual core processors on Intel would get a few of us to reconsider. Let's start with the Mid-Range systems.
Mid-Range Summaries
| Mid-Range AMD |
| Hardware |
Recommended Component |
Price |
| Processor |
Athlon 64 3200+ 90nm (Retail) - Winchester core |
$190 |
| Motherboard |
Chaintech VNF4 Ultra |
$89 |
| Memory |
2x512MB OCZ Premier |
$84 |
| Video Card |
Powercolor X800XL OEM |
$279 |
| Hard Drive |
Seagate 250GB 7200.8 SATA |
$128 |
| Optical Drive |
NEC 16X DVDR 3520A |
$48 |
| Floppy Drive |
NEC; Sony; TEAC; Samsung; etc. |
$8 |
| Case |
Antec SLK3000-B |
$56 |
| Power Supply |
Antec SmartPower 2.0 400W |
$66 |
| Display |
Hyundai Imagequest L90D+ 19" 8ms |
$350 |
| Speakers |
Logitech Z-5300e 5.1 |
$135 |
| Keyboard and Mouse |
Logitech Internet Pro Desktop |
$26 |
| Bottom Line |
|
$1459 |
| Mid-Range Intel |
| Hardware |
Recommended Component |
Price |
| Processor |
Pentium 540J 3.2GHz 1MB (Retail) - Prescott core |
$213 |
| Motherboard |
ASUS P5GD1 |
$110 |
| Memory |
2x512MB OCZ Premier |
$84 |
| Video Card |
Powercolor X800XL OEM |
$279 |
| Hard Drive |
Seagate 250GB 7200.8 SATA |
$128 |
| Optical Drive |
NEC 16X DVDR 3520A |
$48 |
| Floppy Drive |
NEC; Sony; TEAC; Samsung; etc. |
$8 |
| Case |
Antec SLK3000-B |
$56 |
| Power Supply |
Antec SmartPower 2.0 400W |
$66 |
| Display |
Hyundai Imagequest L90D+ 19" 8ms |
$350 |
| Speakers |
Logitech Z-5300e 5.1 |
$135 |
| Keyboard and Mouse |
Logitech Internet Pro Desktop |
$26 |
| Bottom Line |
|
$1503 |
Some of you may be wondering why the price of our Mid-Range systems is suddenly $250 more than the last time that we looked at the segment. The answer lies mostly in the upgrades to the LCD and speakers, though overall, the system is simply more powerful. Besides, with our Budget systems ranging from $500 to $1000, we felt that it would be safe to bump up the Mid-Range choices. Feel free to refer to the last
Budget Guide and mix and match parts to fit your needs. This is the system that
we recommend as an all-around computer. It won't be the fastest in every category, but the difference between it and the High-End systems isn't going to be very noticeable for most users. Sure, you can drop back to a CRT and get cheaper speakers, go with a slightly smaller hard drive and a slower CPU and graphics card, etc. None of those are terrible decisions, and you can get quite a lot of computer for close to $1000. We hope it's clear that there is no
specific system that will meet everyone's demands, but we've used all of the parts listed in this system, and every one is a reasonable purchase/upgrade.
High-End Summaries
| High-End AMD |
| Hardware |
Recommended Component |
Price |
| Processor |
Athlon 64 4000+ 90nm (Retail) - San Diego core |
$507 |
| Motherboard |
DFI LANPARTY UT SLI-DR |
$178 |
| Memory |
2x512MB OCZ EL Platinum Rev 2 |
$188 |
| Video Card |
2 x 6800GT - eVGA; MSI; or XFX |
$690 |
| Hard Drive |
Hitachi 7K250 400GB SATA |
$265 |
| Optical Drive |
NEC 16X DVDR 3520A |
$48 |
| Floppy Drive |
NEC; Sony; TEAC; Samsung; etc. |
$8 |
| Case |
AeroCool Spiral Galaxies |
$108 |
| Power Supply |
Enermax EG565P-VE FMA2.0 SLI 535W |
$97 |
| Display |
Dell 2001FP 20" 16ms |
$530 |
| Sound Card |
Chaintech AV-710 7.1 |
$27 |
| Speakers |
Logitech Z-5500d 5.1 |
$245 |
| Keyboard and Mouse |
Logitech Internet Pro Desktop |
$26 |
| Bottom Line |
|
$2917 |
| High-End Intel |
| Hardware |
Recommended Component |
Price |
| Processor |
Pentium 650 3.4GHz 2MB (Retail) - Irwindale/Prescott 2M core |
$412 |
| Motherboard |
MSI P4N Diamond |
$229 |
| Memory |
2x512MB Crucial PC-5300 Value |
$172 |
| Video Card |
2 x 6800GT - eVGA; MSI; or XFX |
$690 |
| Hard Drive |
Hitachi 7K250 400GB SATA |
$265 |
| Optical Drive |
NEC 16X DVDR 3520A |
$48 |
| Floppy Drive |
NEC; Sony; TEAC; Samsung; etc. |
$8 |
| Case |
AeroCool Spiral Galaxies |
$108 |
| Power Supply |
Enermax EG565P-VE FMA2.0 SLI 535W |
$97 |
| Display |
Dell 2001FP 20" 16ms |
$530 |
| Sound Card |
Chaintech AV-710 7.1 |
$27 |
| Speakers |
Logitech Z-5500d 5.1 |
$245 |
| Keyboard and Mouse |
Logitech Internet Pro Desktop |
$26 |
| Bottom Line |
|
$2857 |
We still really want the option to throw a Pentium D into the Intel system, but we'll have to wait a little longer. The same goes for the Athlon X2 chips, though those are further off than the Pentium D. While the Intel system is actually cheaper than the AMD, despite the extremely expensive motherboard, it's really not a fair comparison. Both systems are SLI capable, but the AMD system will overclock better and quite a few benchmarks - especially games - will be dominated by the AMD platform. Besides the mentioned caveats, there isn't much that you can do to increase the power of the High-End systems without spending a lot more money. If you're looking for a good way to spend all of your tax returns and then some, at least computers are generally less harmful than other addictions.
Closing Thoughts
It's been a while since our last Guide, so we felt that it was best to cover a lot of options in a single article. Hopefully, you now have a better idea of what you want to spend your money on. Any questions, comments, feedback, corrections, or even complaints are welcome.
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60 Comments
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Tujan - Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - link
Err a,thanks for reply..Calin.bummer when I do that.
Garyclaus16 - Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - link
All this article tells me is that my once 'bleeding edge' [939 Athlon64 3200+]system is now merely a mid range PC...save for my pqi turbo 2-2-2-5 :PStill...I am sad...I need to save up another 2k now for later this year. > :(
Tujan - Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - link
Thanks for reply Chris..Yeah Ive followed a few stories about the VIA Edens. Just hovering around 1 GHz. With single PCI slot.They too,have onboard graphics. Like pull that off , keep onboard sound maybe,...
Certainly limiting themselves with that kind of choice.Then Im not what that is suppose to reach. Two PCI-e slots at minimum for me.But this sends the engineers back to work.
Most vendors Iv seen include the graphics onto the mini-atx motherboards. MSI has an mini-atx w/o graphics ,..775.But isn't seen at vendors. Situation with the power,could make do with feature set of 915..945,955/Nvidias on mini-atx(s),.Since the lan is onboard.Might consider having maybe single Sata as well.
Not like being able to see clearly now...""I can see clearly now the rain is gone""..:)
Weird how we will see magic in closed black box embedded solution before we have that choice.
ProviaFan - Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - link
I agree with #34 for the most part, but anyone heavily into digital photography (whether with DSLR or scanned film) knows that it is very easy to exceed 1GB with Photoshop and a few images with some adjustment layers and layer masks (not to mention that my PC is general purpose and I usually have other stuff going in the background as well).stickx - Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - link
quoted from the guide: "long-time favorite, the OCZ Rev. 2 Platinum. While the price increase is quite drastic, it's worth mentioning that this same RAM cost as much as $275 just a few months back. It uses Samsung TCCD memory blanks"Unfortunately OCZ is no longer using TCCD memory in this product. This has been verified on several forums in xtremesystems.org and in dfi-street.com where people have removed the heat spreaders to find chips other that TCCD. I think you need to update your guide for this info.
OrSin - Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - link
Damn people get off thier backs. It a damn guide. Make all the choices you. They are giving thier recommondation, they are not give you ever fcking choice under the sun. No guide can have everyones choice.And ars, I don't know what planet your from but if you think epox is even near Asus or MSI in quality then then you full of it. If i saw any sit say Exop is better then ASUS, then I would stop reading them. Better then chaintech ost likely then not the top tier guys.
And for the record I play alot games and have noticed no improvement with 2GB of 1GB or memory.
Don know what you do thet 2GB is needed. Now I'm not saying you can;t find a way to use more then 1GB, but how many people actually do and on a regular bases.
Pythias - Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - link
When you guys refer to response time, is thet grey-to-grey, black-white-black, or total response time?MrOblivious - Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - link
Supposedly the issue with MSI NEO4 boards and 90nm chips has been fixed:http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?topic=80384.0
arswihart - Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - link
Kris - so you are now saying all mobo makers are essentially equal in terms of support, upgrades, MTBF (bad caps excuse is dead now since they all use good/great quality caps). So what's left to make me choose Asus/MSI? If you are saying reputation, I can just direct you to the forums, their boards are no better or worse than any of the competition. If you are recommending based on sales, thats just dumb.ceefka - Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - link
#1 I don't know how the onboard will handle sound in games, but I'd count on it to do that on the level it is built, i.e. no better than it will play a CD or DVD. It is however safe to say that onboard will definately not work for (semi)professional audio on a PC.I always thought that any realtime sound effects were handled by the CPU, unless you have a dedicated DSP-card or multiples thereof which gamers seldom do ;-)
Jarred: "anyone who doesn't intend to do any recording of audio" and what about those that do? I do read a lot about DAW's on the net, but have to get back to AT regularly to get a the details straight.
What do you make of this? http://www.rme-audio.com/english/techinfo/nforce4_...
With the Thonex audio stress test file (downloadable from http://www.adkproaudio.com/downloads.cfm), including memory-intensive data communication via samples/VSTis, and used with Cubase SX/Nuendo 2/3, soundcard latency has to be increased to approx. 2048 samples buffer latency setting with the NF4 to receive glitch-free audio recordings whereas with the NF3, and equivalent software/hardware/soundware equipment, the minimum latency can be significantly reduced (some 128-256 samples). Likewise, cpu load values are significantly higher with the NF4 than with the NF3 ditto - based on exactly the same audio stress test files and equivalent hardware peripherals.
The Thonex could be nice for your next high end guide when the dualcores are out.