Entry Level Buyer's Guide, October 2005
by Jarred Walton on October 14, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Graphics Recommendations
All of the motherboards are PCI Express, so we don't need to worry about AGP cards anymore. The Office builds also include integrated graphics, further eliminating the need for graphics cards. You may need to add a DX9 capable GPU in the future to get the most out of Windows Vista, but by the time you're ready to install Vista, even a $100 graphics card will likely be trounced by the $50 cards of the future. For the Gaming configurations - depending on how much gaming you plan on doing - we recommend that you spend as much money as possible on a graphics card. We've allocated an extra $250 for the gaming builds in order to accommodate higher performance requirements, but we'll still offer two options for the graphics card: a lower cost card and an upgraded card. (The final system configurations will use the lower cost option.)
Price: $138 shipped (Retail)
We considered quite a few options for the base graphics choice. X700 Pro is the cheapest and still offers reasonable performance for the $100 price tag. We'd like a bit more performance, though, so we expanded the search to the 6600 GT, 6800, and X800 lines. X1300 and X1600 might become viable in the future, but they are not yet available for purchase. The X800 lineup starts at $130 for the Sapphire X800 GT and then quickly jumps to $160 or more. There's also a $30 rebate to get the X800 for $120, which might be worthwhile if you can wait for the rebate to come through. We looked at X800 GT Performance, and found it to be competitive with the 6600 GT. However, the 6600 GT is still available for less, particularly when you consider that the cheapest X800 GT is a 128MB DDR-700 offering (as opposed to the 256MB DDR-980 cards). GeForce 6800 cards are all $170 or more even with a rebate, so we passed them by and ended up with the venerable 6600 GT.
Offering acceptable performance at resolutions up to 1280x1024 when antialiasing is turned off, the 6600 GT is a good match for the budget gamer. It's getting a bit "slow" relative to the fastest cards on the market, but it still manages to put up a fight with the upcoming X1600 XT. Given the price of $130 vs. the $249 MSRP for a yet-to-be-shipped X1600 XT, there's little reason to consider the latter. XFX, Chaintech, and eVGA are all priced similarly when you count rebates, but we took the eVGA for $138 and bypassed the need for a rebate. XFX allows you to spend $10 more now and get a net savings of $10 once the rebate clears, if you're interested in that sort of thing.
Price: $186 shipped (Retail)
For a bit more money, there are quite a few upgrade options. The X800 GT isn't really worth the added cost, but the GTO and GTO2 models pack in quite a few extras - extra pipelines, that is. The choice boils down to going with a GTO 256MB card or spending the extra $40 for the GTO2. GTO2 cards have 12 pixel pipelines but can usually be "unlocked" to 16 pipelines and X850 XT speeds. (To gain the extra performance from the GTO2, you have to flash the card with the X850 XT BIOS, but it always works - at least so far. The final clock speed varies, but most people have been getting good results. You can read more about the BIOS flashing process at TechPowerUp.) However, prices and availability are becoming difficult to gauge, so we'll opt for the standard GTO.
The GTO cards run at 400/980 speeds by default, but there's a decent chance of overclocking the core a bit. You'll want to get a card that has the 6-pin PCIe power connector for best results, which is why we've listed the Connect3D card instead of the Sapphire model. (Apparently, there's a very good chance that you can flash this card to an X850 XT BIOS as well.) What you end up with is close to X800/X850 Pro performance and $50 left over in your pocket. We won't list this component in the final list, but if you care enough about gaming to read the whole article, we think that this is the best price/performance option out there right now.
We really like the GTO2 for overclockers and others willing to flash the BIOS, but it might be gone by the time you read this, so we'll leave it as an honorable mention. (Some resellers have increased prices on the GTO2 cards by $50 to $90 in just the past week! It's still a bit cheaper than the real X850 XT, but you're only saving about $30 instead of $100+.) Sapphire apparently has one more shipment of GTO2 cores coming in, but it's going to be the last.
All of the motherboards are PCI Express, so we don't need to worry about AGP cards anymore. The Office builds also include integrated graphics, further eliminating the need for graphics cards. You may need to add a DX9 capable GPU in the future to get the most out of Windows Vista, but by the time you're ready to install Vista, even a $100 graphics card will likely be trounced by the $50 cards of the future. For the Gaming configurations - depending on how much gaming you plan on doing - we recommend that you spend as much money as possible on a graphics card. We've allocated an extra $250 for the gaming builds in order to accommodate higher performance requirements, but we'll still offer two options for the graphics card: a lower cost card and an upgraded card. (The final system configurations will use the lower cost option.)
Click to enlarge.
Price: $138 shipped (Retail)
We considered quite a few options for the base graphics choice. X700 Pro is the cheapest and still offers reasonable performance for the $100 price tag. We'd like a bit more performance, though, so we expanded the search to the 6600 GT, 6800, and X800 lines. X1300 and X1600 might become viable in the future, but they are not yet available for purchase. The X800 lineup starts at $130 for the Sapphire X800 GT and then quickly jumps to $160 or more. There's also a $30 rebate to get the X800 for $120, which might be worthwhile if you can wait for the rebate to come through. We looked at X800 GT Performance, and found it to be competitive with the 6600 GT. However, the 6600 GT is still available for less, particularly when you consider that the cheapest X800 GT is a 128MB DDR-700 offering (as opposed to the 256MB DDR-980 cards). GeForce 6800 cards are all $170 or more even with a rebate, so we passed them by and ended up with the venerable 6600 GT.
Offering acceptable performance at resolutions up to 1280x1024 when antialiasing is turned off, the 6600 GT is a good match for the budget gamer. It's getting a bit "slow" relative to the fastest cards on the market, but it still manages to put up a fight with the upcoming X1600 XT. Given the price of $130 vs. the $249 MSRP for a yet-to-be-shipped X1600 XT, there's little reason to consider the latter. XFX, Chaintech, and eVGA are all priced similarly when you count rebates, but we took the eVGA for $138 and bypassed the need for a rebate. XFX allows you to spend $10 more now and get a net savings of $10 once the rebate clears, if you're interested in that sort of thing.
Click to enlarge.
Price: $186 shipped (Retail)
For a bit more money, there are quite a few upgrade options. The X800 GT isn't really worth the added cost, but the GTO and GTO2 models pack in quite a few extras - extra pipelines, that is. The choice boils down to going with a GTO 256MB card or spending the extra $40 for the GTO2. GTO2 cards have 12 pixel pipelines but can usually be "unlocked" to 16 pipelines and X850 XT speeds. (To gain the extra performance from the GTO2, you have to flash the card with the X850 XT BIOS, but it always works - at least so far. The final clock speed varies, but most people have been getting good results. You can read more about the BIOS flashing process at TechPowerUp.) However, prices and availability are becoming difficult to gauge, so we'll opt for the standard GTO.
The GTO cards run at 400/980 speeds by default, but there's a decent chance of overclocking the core a bit. You'll want to get a card that has the 6-pin PCIe power connector for best results, which is why we've listed the Connect3D card instead of the Sapphire model. (Apparently, there's a very good chance that you can flash this card to an X850 XT BIOS as well.) What you end up with is close to X800/X850 Pro performance and $50 left over in your pocket. We won't list this component in the final list, but if you care enough about gaming to read the whole article, we think that this is the best price/performance option out there right now.
We really like the GTO2 for overclockers and others willing to flash the BIOS, but it might be gone by the time you read this, so we'll leave it as an honorable mention. (Some resellers have increased prices on the GTO2 cards by $50 to $90 in just the past week! It's still a bit cheaper than the real X850 XT, but you're only saving about $30 instead of $100+.) Sapphire apparently has one more shipment of GTO2 cores coming in, but it's going to be the last.
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Rocket321 - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
Is 100 hours an exaggeration or near the true testing time for that type of article? I guess that would leave lots of time to write an article to go with the numbers.Just curious.
Rocket321
JarredWalton - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
Read the http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">Venice overclocking article. 100 hours isn't really an exaggeration, if I'm thorough. It's about 5 hours per complete benchmark run, assuming it doesn't crash or fail at some point. (Or just get stuck - WinStones can do that, even on a stable system. It just sits at some point where the script got stuck, and you have to manually restart it. That sucks when you start the benchmark, leave, and come back five hours later to find that it only ran for 5 minutes before getting stuck.)So, 1.8 GHz to 2.6 GHz is five configurations, and two RAM choices makes for 10 benchmark runs. Given the amount of time there are glitches to address, 100 hours is probably about right. Luckily, I don't have to be sitting at the PC the whole time. Heheh.
mino - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
Well, as usuall. Someone clearly stole some letters here and there. I apologize for him :)just one addon:
This guide IS one of the best(if not the best) one could find around. No irony here.
I felt my comment was not clear enough on that matter.
yacoub - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...">http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...amp;thre...noxipoo - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
while it is a good guide for the price, I think the price targets needs to be revised or followed better. it is the same issue I had with the mid-range system guide. 1200-1500 is just not mid-range for me. kind of feels like the guy that told me 55 grand for a car is mid-range because there are ferraris that cost a lot more...JarredWalton - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
A few quotes from the summary page:"You might not realize this, but I actually pick the parts that I want to include and only then tally the cost. As long as I'm within about $100, I usually stick with it - if I overshoot the budget, it's because I really don't feel that it's a good idea to cut corners any further just to shave $50 from the total."
That should explain my philosophy. Others disagree with it, but if you can spend $500, you can also spend $600. This budget guide is cheaper (for the non-gaming setups especially) then the last one. I also offered advice on how to cut costs of either system:
"If the $500 price point is really important, dropping to 512MB of RAM and getting rid of the speakers will get you close."
As well as:
"Our gaming configurations exceed the target $750 price by a bit more, though there are additional opportunities for cutting costs. Getting the less expensive options on the RAM, HDD, DVDR, display, and speakers will cut the price of each system by $90 without really affecting performance or features much (other than the noticeable change in display size)."
The tables are quick summaries of 7000+ words of text, and as such they cannot even begin to convey all of the options that are out there. That's what all the extra writing is for, to explain why the final choices were made.
And of course, for every person like you who feels the price is too high, there are several others suggesting upgrades like a better PSU, an LCD, a different case, etc. Catch-22. If you can actually put together a complete PC for $500 that people on here would really consider better, I'd be more than surprised. Feel free to post such a system, though, and ask for comments from others. :)
PrinceGaz - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
I don't think dropping down from 2x512MB of RAM to 1x512MB of RAM would be a good idea on the AMD gaming system, despite it being a S754 CPU with asingle-channel memory, as it would only save $48 at the prices listed. Many games these days require a minimum of 512MB to run acceptably, and having 1GB makes a big difference with many. And then there's BF2 which likes more than 1GB, and others will follow soon.Rather than drop down from 1GB to 512MB and cause stuttering in the latest demanding games, you'd be better off saving a similar amount of money by getting a cheaper graphics-card like a standard 6600, or an X700Pro. Let's face it, the sort of games that need more than a 6600 or X700Pro, are also going to need more than 512MB of system memory to run smoothly, so the money is better spent on double the memory rather than a faster graphics-card.
Apart from that, a good article. Putting together systems on a tiny budget isn't easy as you're always having to weigh the consequences of shifting a few dollars from one area to another.
JarredWalton - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
Actually, the 512MB RAM comment was for the office systems. For the gaming, I'd just go with the cheaper options (listed in the office configs) for every part, other than the GPU. $95 RAM vs. $87 RAM, $169 CRT vs. $127, etc.Adding up the total cost of the "value gaming", you could get:
AMD:
Sempron 64 (754) 3000+ - 128KB 1.80 GHz Palermo 75
DFI Infinity nF4X 77
Patriot Signature CL2.5 2x512MB 87
eVGA GeForce 6600GT 128MB 138
Hitachi 3.0Gbps 80GB 7200RPM 8MB Deskstar 7K80 57
NEC 3540A Black (OEM) 41
Foxconn 3GTH-002 plus 300W PSU 70
Envision EFT720 17" CRT 127
Logitech X-230 2.1 Speakers 37
Logitech Internet Pro Desktop 23
Bottom Line $732
Intel:
Celeron D 331 - 256KB 2.66 GHz Prescott 79
Gigabyte GA-8I945P-G 113
Patriot Signature PC-4200 2x512MB 74
eVGA GeForce 6600GT 128MB 138
Hitachi 3.0Gbps 80GB 7200RPM 8MB Deskstar 7K80 57
NEC 3540A Black (OEM) 41
Foxconn 3GTH-002 plus 300W PSU 70
Envision EFT720 17" CRT 127
Logitech X-230 2.1 Speakers 37
Logitech Internet Pro Desktop 23
Bottom Line $759
The display is still a big compromise, IMO, but everything else on that alternative gaming setup is almost as good as the higher cost version. I still prefer to spend the extra, particularly on the case/PSU, speakers, CRT, and HDD. The RAM and the DVDR upgrades are less critical.
RandomFool - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
Not to nit pick but if you're going to make a budget system and set a target price of 750 you really shouldn't go over that by more than 20-30 bucks. I realize gaming systems need more oomph but it is a budget system. You could cut back on ram grab some normal 2.1 speakers (i don't think 5.1 is required at all.) and be alot close to 750 before OS that is.Also the price of an OS should be included because without one all you have is a box that wasted electricity.
flatblastard - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
I couldn't agree with you more. The trend here lately seems to be to blow the budget by $100 or more. The rigs in my newegg wishlist would probably have made better candidates for the entry-level and mid-range price guides of late, and they don't cost more than the budget I originally set for them either.