Mid-Range Buyer's Guide, September 2005
by Jarred Walton on September 19, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
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
$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
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.
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.
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JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link
This recommendation has nothing to do with marketing. Does anyone *need* this fast of a card? Well, if you want to play certain games at 1600x1200 (or 1920x1200), then yes, this level of hardware will be required. If you're okay with 1024x768, then the 7800GT is overkill. However, you're talking about spending $300 for a new GPU. That would get you a 6800GT, X800XL, or X850Pro. For 25% more money on the GPU, you will get a card that is http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2496...">far more than 25% faster in most 3D games. (Unless you continue to run at 1024x768 without AA enabled.)That's not marketing, that's the simple truth. A 7800GT is 25 to 75% faster than the current $300 cards. If you've already got a good gaming system, there's no need to upgrade right now. If you're running two year old hardware and want to upgrade to something faster, though, why come up a bit short? It's not like I'm suggesting that you spend the extra $100+ to go from a 6800GT to a 6800Ultra or from an X800Pro to an X800XTPE. You *can* cut costs on the hardware, but if anything I'd ditch the SLI board and enthusiast RAM rather than downgrading the GPU - at least in a gaming system.
jonah42 - Monday, September 19, 2005 - link
Yes a good guide, some thought provoking choices but you have forgotten the importance of a good sound card. You do not mention the quality of the onboard sound of the DFI board - I think goud sound quality realy brings a game to life - adding to the cinematic feeling greatly. If you want good multichannel placement then the Audigy 4 is a must, for best sound qaulity then a good Envy24 based card is recommended - eg Audotrak Prodigy or equivalent.PrinceGaz - Monday, September 19, 2005 - link
Onboard sound quality is more than good enough for most people these days, and if they want improved sound quality it would be better spent on higher-quality speakers than on a discrete sound-card.For gamers an Audigy 4 is unnecessary, a cheap Audigy 2 or Audigy 2 ZS would be perfectly adequate. Or you could always fall for Creative's hype and blow a fortune on an X-Fi of course. I'm perfectly happy with the sound from the Karajan module on my DFI board, but I do occasionally consider getting an Audigy 2 [ZS] for games.
yacoub - Monday, September 19, 2005 - link
BlueGears X-Mystique - $99 and I believe it does not resample sources like the Creative cards do. If it does, there are other options out there for around the same price that don't.So anyway, you're looking at an affordable non-Creative soundcard that offers great sound reproduction. It's hard to ask for more than that short of a pro-level card. :)
ceefka - Monday, September 19, 2005 - link
I agree with your point of view here, though I wouldn't recommend a board that doesn't feature Firewire. Sure it is possible to buy a PCI card for Firewire (where are the PCI-E 1x/2x Firewire cards by the way?) but you might want to save the ever diminishing number of PCI-slots for something else than a PCI-card?ceefka - Monday, September 19, 2005 - link
Forget what I said. I just found one from http://www.siig.com/product.asp?catid=14&pid=9...">SIIGceefka - Monday, September 19, 2005 - link
but you might want to save the ever diminishing number of PCI-slots for something else than a PCI-card?bummer, that shoud have read:
but you might want to save the ever diminishing number of PCI-slots for something else than a Firewire PCI-card?
flatblastard - Monday, September 19, 2005 - link
.....but I can't seem to get past the fact that the system must be overclocked to actually reach the level of "Mid-range". Buying the exact parts in the guide and build without overclocking will result in an "entry-level" rig. I know we don't have to buy EXACTLY the same parts, but still, I wouldn't call that a mid range rig, not by a long shot.yacoub - Monday, September 19, 2005 - link
Or just don't go dual-core if you want more CPU speed -and- the faster GPU. :)Sure if you encode Div-X while you game it wouldn't perform as well but honestly people who does that??
JarredWalton - Monday, September 19, 2005 - link
It doesn't *have* to be overclocked. I've got an article that will show the performance scaling of several options, and while the overclocked 3200+ is definitely faster, I'd take a stock 3000+ with a 7800GT over a 3800+ with an X800Pro. I mean, do you want 30% faster frame rates at 1024x768 (which is what you'd get with a faster CPU), or do you want 50% faster frame rates at 1600x1200? I don't know that those percentages are exact, but I'll look at those in the article.