High End Buyer's Guide - September 2004
by Wesley Fink on August 30, 2004 12:22 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
PCI Express Video
PCIe Recommendation: ATI X800 XT Platinum 256MBPrice: $545 Shipped
If you are an overclocker looking for top performance on a new Intel 925X board, the X800 XT is the best PCI Express option, particularly if you plan to overclock the system. In all of our reviews of the Intel 925X boards, overclocking requires running the PCIe out of spec, and our tests of the current ATI video cards show that they tolerate out-of-spec PCIe speeds much better than comparable nVidia video cards. This makes the X800 XT Platinum a very good match to our 925X alternative High-End system.
The X800 XT is still hard to find, but it appears that availability is improving and will continue to become less of a problem over time. As we have pointed out in the past, you can choose either the X800 XT or the 6800 Ultra and be perfectly happy and perfectly competitive in the performance area. Therefore, if you don't plan to overclock, then either top-end card will fit your needs very well. However, for overclocking PCI Express, the ATI cards simply survive to higher PCIe overclock levels. If Doom 3 is your game, that might also sway you the other way to the 6800 Ultra, which does perform better in Doom 3 than ATI's top card.
Listed below is part of our RealTime pricing engine, which lists the lowest prices available on ATI video cards from many different reputable vendors:
If you cannot find the lowest prices on the products that we've recommended on this page, it's because we don't list some of them in our RealTime pricing engine. Until we do, we suggest that you do an independent search online at the various vendors' web sites. Just pick and choose where you want to buy your products by looking for a vendor located under the "Vendor" heading.
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Wesley Fink - Wednesday, September 1, 2004 - link
Uff -The two FX53 I've tested both run fine at 2.6GHz (future FX55 spec) with stock cooling. While you will get more potential with better cooling, you are not locked out of using a higher multiplier just because you use stock cooling. The AMD Retail HSF does a decent job of cooling, though there are certainly better solutions available.
Uff - Wednesday, September 1, 2004 - link
My point with FX-53 and stock cooling was exactly that: the main bonus you get with FX-53 is that it's multiplier unlocked but to make any use of that you need proper cooling.Wesley Fink - Wednesday, September 1, 2004 - link
#40 - The DVD prices were pulled at slightly different times for the Recommended and Alternate systems. For consistency, both charts now show a $97 price for the Pioneer 108. Prices constantly change, so any published price will generally be off in a few days or weeks.Goi - Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - link
Why is it that the DVD burner in the recommended high-end system costs $97 yet the exact same one in the alternate high-end system costs $96?krawl3r - Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - link
every single time, these guides ignore 2 of the best PSUs on the market: the PC Power and Cooling 510Deluxe which is miles ahead of the antec. Also ignored is the Fortron 530s. In my experience, the Fortrons are at least on par with the Antecs of not equal.P.S. If you spend the money on an FX-53 you might as well get a server board and go with the 940pin version so you can plug in a SCSI RAID card and have an array of 73GB 15k drives....just my $0.02
neogodless - Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - link
There is no "be all, end all" guide to anything, particularly in a rapidly changing technology environment. This guide is merely a guide. A place to start from, and go from there. They recommend getting the keyboard and mouse that is right for you, whether it be $70 or $10. However, I think there may be some logic in requesting that there's more of a reasonable scale from budget, mainstream, and high-end. This high-end guide tries to balance having enough money to buy the fastest computer with trying to make it affordable to a relatively wide audience, but really, I think there may be a different way to go about it. I think you could save a lot of money for a minimally slower computer, and by doing that, saving money for your next high-end machine. If you get the absolutely fastest machine, then there really should be no limits on money, and it should really be a no budget dream machine. If you're on a budget, even if it's $5000, you might want to be a little tiny bit stingier, and make sure that six months or a year from now, you still have a good budget for getting a high end rig.The only typo I saw was "could care less" in the audio section. Should be "couldn't care less".
The guides are a lot of work, and I think they are somewhat reasonable starting points. I appreciate them, even though I don't really use them for my own purchasing decisions. They are interesting, and hopefully helpful to some people.
jbritt1234 - Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - link
How can you build a $3500 PC and then suggest a $10 mouse??? That's crazy! Lost a little respect for ya there.Wesley Fink - Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - link
Uff - The improvements from Dual-Channel and 1024k cache vs. 512k cache are cumulative. So while either improvement alone is only 2 to 4% improvement, together the added cache and dual channel make the FX53 5% to 8% faster than the SC 512k 3700+ you suggest. If you want the top performance then the FX53 is the fastest.The FX53 is also completely unlocked, up and down, unlike the 3700+, 3800+, 3500+, or 3400+, which makes it possible to run at 2.6GHz for example at DDR400. All Athlon 64 are unlocked down, but only the FX is completely unlocked.
Uff - Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - link
I'm just wondering why anyone in their right mind would buy an FX-53 and run it on stock cooling? Other than making more space in your room by taking out some of the spare piles of money, there is no real gain in it compared to say 3700+ (or even a 2.4GHz 3400+, since tests have shown little gain from the extra 512kb cache).Caligynemania - Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - link
I am surprised that you reccomend mere computer speakers for a high end system. A receiver/speaker system (albeit more expensive) would be more appropriate for a high end system. I realize that this is outside the scope of a computer buyer's guide, but I think anyone who truly appreciates music/sound/noise would be willing to spend the $500 for a set of speakers that will last a lifetime (speakers dont go obselete or break). Combined with a good receiver (additional $100) you can output amazing sound from the radio, tv, computer, dvd. For $500 you can get the amazing NHT SB3 speaker system or the Klipsch RB25's.