Mid-Range Buyer's Guide, September 2005

System Summaries

That takes care of the recommendations for four different systems. We've included AMD and Intel variants for both platforms, though we have to say that we prefer two of the choices over the others. The Intel Gaming solution is really not the best fit for that market, while the Pentium D with 2GB of RAM really provides a lot of value for the Office and Professional market. (Yes, the AMD X2 is also very good in that market, though it does cost more.)

Gaming Systems

AMD Mid-Range Gaming System
Hardware	Component	Price
Processor	Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 512K 1.80GHz (939) - Retail	146
Motherboard	DFI LanParty UT SLI-DR	165
Memory	Patriot PC-3200 2x512MB Extreme Performance XBL	150
Video Card	XFX 7800 GT Overclocked	379
Hard Drive	Western Digital SATA II 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar SE	81
Optical Drive	BenQ DW1640 Black (OEM)	43
Case	Cooler Master Cavalier 3 CAV-T03-UK	76
Power Supply	SunBeam 550W NUUO SUNNU550-US-BK Modular PSU	86
Display	Acer AL1914smd-8 19 inch 8ms LCD	301
Speakers	Labtec ARENA 685 5.1 Speakers	48
Keyboard and Mouse	Logitech Internet Pro Desktop	23
Bottom Line		1498

Intel Mid-Range Gaming System
Hardware	Component	Price
Processor	Pentium 630 2MB 3.0GHz (775) - Retail	175
Motherboard	ASUS P5ND2-SLI Deluxe	199
Memory	Corsair PC-5300 2x512MB XMS2 C4	137
Video Card	XFX 7800 GT Overclocked	379
Hard Drive	Western Digital SATA II 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar SE	81
Optical Drive	BenQ DW1640 Black (OEM)	43
Case	Cooler Master Cavalier 3 CAV-T03-UK	76
Power Supply	SunBeam 550W NUUO SUNNU550-US-BK Modular PSU	86
Display	Acer AL1914smd-8 19 inch 8ms LCD	301
Speakers	Labtec ARENA 685 5.1 Speakers	48
Keyboard and Mouse	Logitech Internet Pro Desktop	23
Bottom Line		1548

$1500+ for a "gaming system" seems like an awful lot of money, doesn't it? The $400 price of the upcoming Xbox 360 looks like a bargain by comparison! However, consider this for a moment: you don't need a display for the Xbox 360, as you use your TV - or alternatively, add the cost of a TV to the console. Furthermore, you can't do most business work on a console. Email, word processing, spreadsheets, surfing the Internet - some of those might be possible to a limited degree, but consoles certainly won't match the overall utility of a personal computer. If you're like many people, you already need a computer in your home. For gaming, you're pretty much just adding a $400 graphics card (and even a $200 graphics card would suffice).

If you can use your current monitor, speakers, keyboard, and mouse, and if you go with the EVGA bundle, you could get the price of a fully capable gaming system down to just over $1000, shipped. You could also go the other direction and buy 2x1GB of RAM, a faster CPU, a big LCD, and more HDD capacity (or multiple drives), resulting in a truly High-End system costing over $2000. Neither option is "correct", so spend what you want to spend and use this Buyer's Guide as exactly that: a guide on what you might want to purchase.

If you want other options on how to balance the Gaming performance against cost, drop the SLI support and get the Office motherboard selection, and drop to an Antec Sonata-II instead of the separate case and PSU. You save $114 on the either configuration. You can go with a cheaper graphics card as well - $230 for the X800XL, and you're right at the $1250 price point. Personally, though, we'd rather spend the extra money for the 7800GT.

Office Systems

AMD Mid-Range System
Hardware	Component	Price
Processor	Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2x512K 2.0GHz (939) - Retail	361
Motherboard	EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra	98
Memory	Corsair PC-3200 2x512MB Value CL2.5	89
Video Card	Connect3D Radeon X700 Pro 128MB	98
Hard Drive	Hitachi SATA 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Deskstar T7K250 NCQ	120
Optical Drive	NEC 3540A Black (OEM)	42
Case and Power Supply	Antec Sonata II + SmartPower 2.0 450W PSU	115
Display	Acer AL1914smd-8 19 inch 8ms LCD	301
Speakers	Logitech Z-3e 2.1 Speakers	73
Keyboard and Mouse	Logitech Internet Pro Desktop	23
Bottom Line		1320

Intel Mid-Range System
Hardware	Component	Price
Processor	Pentium D 820 2x1MB 2.8GHz (775) - Retail	248
Motherboard	ASUS 945P P5LD2	132
Memory	Corsair PC-4200 2x1024MB Value	163
Video Card	Connect3D Radeon X700 Pro 128MB	98
Hard Drive	Hitachi SATA 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Deskstar T7K250 NCQ	120
Optical Drive	NEC 3540A Black (OEM)	42
Case and Power Supply	Antec Sonata II + SmartPower 2.0 450W PSU	115
Display	Acer AL1914smd-8 19 inch 8ms LCD	301
Speakers	Logitech Z-3e 2.1 Speakers	73
Keyboard and Mouse	Logitech Internet Pro Desktop	23
Bottom Line		1315

Our Office configurations are a little less painful on the old pocketbook, ringing up at just over $1300. As with the Gaming setups, reusing your current display, speakers, etc. could reduce the cost quite a bit, getting under the $1000 price point. For the AMD setup, you might consider upgrading to 2x1GB of RAM, since multitasking that can take advantage of two cores is also more likely to surpass the 1GB RAM usage mark. The Intel system comes with 2GB of RAM, but the processor is definitely slower than the X2 3800+. It might be worth considering a CPU upgrade for the Intel system, but we're not really sold on the bang for the buck that it offers.

Some of you are probably wondering how the dual core CPUs perform in gaming systems. Many games work fine, though some have issues with two cores being present. (There aren't any current games that can actually utilize both cores, unfortunately.) Anand has mentioned recently that he's looking into gaming compatibility. We do have a modified version of the setaffin.exe Freeware program that might prove useful - unlike setaffin.exe and runfirst.exe, you can set the application to run on any CPU core instead of just CPU 0. If you'd like, give it a try - it's unsupported software, and we take no responsibility for what it might do to your system, of course. It's also available under the GPL license free of charge. (Thanks to Russell Pickett for providing the basis of the tool; simple, yet effective! We've avoided providing a direct link to his web page to avoid overloading his home server.)

Conclusion

We hope that you've found this Buyer's Guide to be useful, and we'll be releasing additional Guides more frequently in the future. Your comments, suggestions, and criticisms are welcome. As we've tried to make clear, there is no perfect system that we can recommend for every person. If you're willing to spend $1250 or so, however, there are plenty of decisions that can be made to tune the system to your needs.

We did not include an OS in the total cost of any system, so that would add $90 to $135 (when purchased with hardware) to the price for Windows XP. We should also mention that there has been some confusion about XP Home and dual-core support. XP SP2 will indeed support both cores; it is licensed as a single socket product, so it supports HyperThreading as well as the Pentium D and X2 processors. Even though it will work, we prefer the added flexibility of XP Professional and feel that it is worth the extra $45.

You could also ditch Microsoft altogether and go with Linux or some other Unix derivative - probably not for gaming, but OpenOffice with Linux actually makes for a rather potent office system. We wouldn't give such a setup to your grandparents, but more knowledgeable computer users shouldn't have too much trouble figuring out how to get such a system working properly.