System Buyer’s Guide: $1700 Performance Midrange
by Mike Jones and Jarred Walton on May 12, 2010 4:52 AM ESTClosing Thoughts
As usual, with the passage of time the amount of performance you can get for your dollar has increased quite a bit, and there are a ton of options. The choice today between midrange AMD and Intel platforms is really a question of priorities. Intel still wins the performance crown in single-threaded performance and has a commanding lead in many of our gaming results. Intel also appears to benefit from application specific optimizations in a few tests (i.e. 3dsmax). However, for thread-heavy work the AMD 1055T generally beats out Intel, sometimes by a large margin. Your choice boils down to 10~25% better multithreaded performance on AMD versus gaming performance that's anywhere from 5% to a whopping 60% faster on Intel. In most other areas, performance is close enough to not worry too much, which means we need to look at other factors.
For the same price, you can get similar features like SATA 6Gbps and USB3 (SATA6 is native with the 890GX on AMD, though). The Intel platform does use around 15W to 40W less power, however, so for a 24/7 system that works out to $13 to $35 per year--or just $4 to $12 per year for a system that's on eight hours per day. That being the case, depending on your particular needs you can go with either system and be happy. Gamers and "greenies" will likely prefer the Intel system while the content creators and video editors will like the AMD setup.
If you're not sure which system is right for you, again, we suggest you look at our complete Bench results. We've included the above chart with some of the more popular benchmarks to give you an idea of what to expect. While the components aren't the same as what we recommend in this guide, most of the differences will be slight. The Bench setup uses an appropriate motherboard/chipset for each platform, with an HD 5870 GPU and an SSD. The performance difference in gaming will be lower than what we show in our Bench results, mostly because the GPU becomes more of a bottleneck, but other than that, the performance will be very similar to what you see in those results.
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knofix - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link
I cant figure out what the target audience is for these systems. (OK maybe MAC buyers, since these two systems fall into their price range and maybe the nobrainer-rich kid with lots of dosh to spare)PC gamers would opt for better CPUs and SLI/CF perhaps, audio enthusiasts would sneer at the speakers (they are utter crap, usable for video streams with 5.1 channel sound yes, but they just massacre the audio files in stereo (so do 2.1)), media coders would be satisfied with the 6core and so would creative artists, although I think they would pick double the CPU power these 2 configurations have to offer and be satisfied with the GPU at hand (since Adobe loves GPUs now) but all of the above mentioned groups would hang you for only including 4GB of RAM. All of these groups of users would benefit from having a SSD.
So all of these guys are mid/high end users. And none of those would pick the configuration you bungled up. Verdict - FAIL
Since me being from the EU, I cant possibly imagine how much these two systems would cost here. OK I can. Price x 1.3, lets call it 2K Euros - btw. that would be the equivalent of an OVERKILL systems price in EU. (lets skip the wealthy minority and focus on real people - that is what mainstream means I guess).
killerclick - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link
I hate poor people whining all the time about how they can't afford this or that.Anyone know where I can get a diamond encrusted laser mouse?
Ditiris - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link
Pretty sure Razer makes that.
Setsunayaki - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link
I'm sorry, but most players play games that are 3 - 5 years old and enjoy playing them. They play the occassional new game out there. Sorry,. but the top games are played by such a marginally low population. I'm part of a gaming club that is linked to other gaming clubs in the state and recently the majority of gamers out there were not playing Crysis or Batman.I still have an older system and with my configuration at 1900 x 1200 (and higher resolutions) play top games. Only lackluster thing in here is my aging video card, but for the most part I can get a stable to good framerate.
The majority of people that I know swiched from PC to XBOX360 in order to play games. They don't want to be troubled with frequent upgrading and only care about just playing game. I personaly do not own next generation consoles, but I know many who have made the switch back to consoles lately....
Majority of computer users are not gamers, they do basic things and I can build a system for basics that is $200 - $300, While a lot of parents do not want their kids messing around their hard earned PCs, so they buy them consoles. Until the industry can make enough software and not just enough to count on my fingers....the majority wont care about the highest end software out there...or even the latest action games when anyone can buy a console and be littered with them.
Polizei608 - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link
Maybe it's midrange because the person who got it was-MAAAAAAAAAAAAIKKKKKKKKKKKKE JONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNES
numberoneoppa - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link
lol'd hard.skrewler2 - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link
might want to fix thatFrostburn - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link
What is up with the horrible picture for this post? For a moment I thought it was a joke from your very first System Buyer's Guide or something, the worst looking case I've ever seen and a 7 year old 4:3 LCD monitor!Just about anything call fall into the "Midrange" category unless it is the fastest and most expensive parts out there. The system looks more expensive because they are buying a new monitor, keyboard, mouse, surround sound setup and a new OS to go with it. Most PC builders will already have/keep most of this stuff the same when they upgrade their system.
Furuno - Thursday, May 13, 2010 - link
First, I agree it is a midrange from performance perspective, as high end should at least have a "reasonable" i7 and "sane" CF/SLI setup. But please (again) consider that AnandTech is an international website, a midrange system should be (relatively) affordable by most people. Most people in my country even think my $1000 system is "crazy". I know we're might be the minority, but please consider this. Maybe using price range instead of Low/Mid/High moniker...Since most of the people that read AT is tech enthusiast and usually buld their own system. I'd like more "roundups" with (if possible) every component available for each category. For example, roundups of every motherboard with 890GX chipset, not just a "select" model.
Oh and, why you never metion about "other" SSD that exist beside Intel/Indilinx/Crucial/SandForce? What about those Imation/A-Data/Sandisk/etc SSD? Is they're any good?
Best Regards,
Furuno
GullLars - Thursday, May 13, 2010 - link
I'm guessing you mean SSD controllers. Imitation uses Mtron controllers, they are older generation and use SLC only. I have 2 of these Mtron Pro SSDs in RAID from back in 2008 before Intel were avalible. They work well, but they behave a bit different from the new SSDs. For one, Mtron SSD don't support NCQ, they have really low read latency, but fairly low random write (roughly 200-250 IOPS, about the same as a 15K SAS HDD whitout NCQ or shortstroke). In everyday use, they are comparable to Indilinx drives, but are more expensive. The pluss is they have no performance degradation whatsoever. Mine perform just as new after soon 2 years in RAID-0 as a much used system drive.
SanDisk SSDs i don't know a lot about, i haven't seen any info outside marketing campaings. The "vRPM" scheme is a farce. Their netbook replacement drives are likely a bit better than the ones they come with, but nothing like Intel or SandForce.
You also have Adtron SSDs, but i don't know if those are on the market anymore.
JMicron is a controller producer you didn't mention. Their early controllers had major issues with random writes. The new generation, JMF612/618(aka thosiba) have gotten it under controll, but are still limited by not using NCQ. They can be considered low-end. WD has made custom firmware for a line using JMF612 focusing on realiability.
Memoright are also a controller producer, but as far as i know, they only made one model. It was the best consumer SSD out there before Intel, but cost the double of Mtron, wich weren't cheap either (I gave about $1500 for my 2x 32GB Mtrons...).
Samsung has made SSD controllers. They have been OK at sequential performance, but sub-par on random performance. The last controller thay made came out about the same time as Indilinx Barefoot, over a year ago. Indilinx clearly beat it at performance. I haven't heard anything about new controllers from them, but they have invested in (not bought) Fusion-IO, wich makes the most powerfull flash SSD controllers i know of.
The other SSD controllers i know of are exclusively used in the enterprise, like STec, BitMicro, Foremay, TMS, Fusion-IO, etc.