Closing Thoughts
So we tested three "budget" platforms today with varying results. The one firm recommendation we can make should come as no surprise. Simply put, socket 754 is a dead end, even though performance is still generally acceptable. AMD might continue to support it, and the motherboards and chips are on the market at reasonable prices, but for a slight increase in price you will definitely get more potential out of socket AM2 or socket 775. Unfortunately, as nice as the Biostar TForce 550 motherboard appears, it seems to be in need of some updates before it can truly become a great budget overclocker. (Never underestimate the importance of a motherboard BIOS.) Still, we're inclined to recommend socket AM2 right now, as we have yet to see any budget socket 775 motherboards available that will support Core 2 Duo chips. Hopefully, that will change during the next few weeks.
What else have we learned? If you're really interested in high resolution plus high image quality gaming, there's no substitute for a fast graphics card. The 7600 GT is a very impressive card given the price, but you're not going to run UXGA/WUXGA (1600x1200/1920x1200) resolutions with 4xAA on any of the more recent titles. If you don't have a monitor capable of supporting higher resolutions, however, it's currently one of the most reasonable gaming GPUs on the market for SXGA (1280x1024) gaming. A few titles (F.E.A.R., Oblivion, Call of Duty 2) will need to run with lowered detail settings, as will future titles, but unless you're ready to spend $250 or more on the graphics card we would recommend sticking with the 7600 GT. Fans of ATI will get similar performance - better in some games, slightly worse in others - from the X1800 GTO, typically for about $25 more.
Going back to our original budget of $650, there are a few other options that are worth considering. First, we used a socket AM2 Sempron processor, but prices on single core Athlon 64 chips really aren't much higher. Clock for clock, you might get another 5%-10% performance increase, but in the end you're still going to be GPU limited in games. If your primary concern isn't gaming, then you really have to consider what you plan on doing with the computer.
For most office tasks, all of the systems -- even without overclocking -- are more than sufficient. If you plan on running some applications that can benefit from SMP configurations, dual core processors are definitely a worthwhile upgrade. Whether you want to make a purchase of the Pentium 805 now or wait for the reduced prices on Athlon X2 and Pentium D processors that are coming later this month is up to you. It is also worth mentioning that Intel's product road maps don't seem to indicate any new budget chips coming out in the near future; once Core 2 Duo launches, Intel will be further shifting its NetBurst products into the budget price sector, so this overview of the current budget platforms will continue to be valid for several more months at least.
The bottom line? You really can get a ton of computing power for a reasonable price these days. 18 months ago, a $500 computer would have consisted of a moderate Athlon XP or Celeron D processor, 512 MB of RAM, and integrated graphics. Another $150 would have given you an upgrade to a Radeon 9600 Pro and possibly 1 GB of RAM. For now, Moore's "Law" seems to be holding steady, as dollar for dollar we've more than doubled performance. Outside of gaming, many people might not actually need that much processing power, but when Windows Vista launches next year we have a feeling Microsoft will find lots of new ways to bring your computer to its knees. As always, though, we recommend people upgrade only when they personally are unhappy with the level of performance (or stability) that their current computer offers. Something better is always right around the corner.
So we tested three "budget" platforms today with varying results. The one firm recommendation we can make should come as no surprise. Simply put, socket 754 is a dead end, even though performance is still generally acceptable. AMD might continue to support it, and the motherboards and chips are on the market at reasonable prices, but for a slight increase in price you will definitely get more potential out of socket AM2 or socket 775. Unfortunately, as nice as the Biostar TForce 550 motherboard appears, it seems to be in need of some updates before it can truly become a great budget overclocker. (Never underestimate the importance of a motherboard BIOS.) Still, we're inclined to recommend socket AM2 right now, as we have yet to see any budget socket 775 motherboards available that will support Core 2 Duo chips. Hopefully, that will change during the next few weeks.
What else have we learned? If you're really interested in high resolution plus high image quality gaming, there's no substitute for a fast graphics card. The 7600 GT is a very impressive card given the price, but you're not going to run UXGA/WUXGA (1600x1200/1920x1200) resolutions with 4xAA on any of the more recent titles. If you don't have a monitor capable of supporting higher resolutions, however, it's currently one of the most reasonable gaming GPUs on the market for SXGA (1280x1024) gaming. A few titles (F.E.A.R., Oblivion, Call of Duty 2) will need to run with lowered detail settings, as will future titles, but unless you're ready to spend $250 or more on the graphics card we would recommend sticking with the 7600 GT. Fans of ATI will get similar performance - better in some games, slightly worse in others - from the X1800 GTO, typically for about $25 more.
Going back to our original budget of $650, there are a few other options that are worth considering. First, we used a socket AM2 Sempron processor, but prices on single core Athlon 64 chips really aren't much higher. Clock for clock, you might get another 5%-10% performance increase, but in the end you're still going to be GPU limited in games. If your primary concern isn't gaming, then you really have to consider what you plan on doing with the computer.
For most office tasks, all of the systems -- even without overclocking -- are more than sufficient. If you plan on running some applications that can benefit from SMP configurations, dual core processors are definitely a worthwhile upgrade. Whether you want to make a purchase of the Pentium 805 now or wait for the reduced prices on Athlon X2 and Pentium D processors that are coming later this month is up to you. It is also worth mentioning that Intel's product road maps don't seem to indicate any new budget chips coming out in the near future; once Core 2 Duo launches, Intel will be further shifting its NetBurst products into the budget price sector, so this overview of the current budget platforms will continue to be valid for several more months at least.
The bottom line? You really can get a ton of computing power for a reasonable price these days. 18 months ago, a $500 computer would have consisted of a moderate Athlon XP or Celeron D processor, 512 MB of RAM, and integrated graphics. Another $150 would have given you an upgrade to a Radeon 9600 Pro and possibly 1 GB of RAM. For now, Moore's "Law" seems to be holding steady, as dollar for dollar we've more than doubled performance. Outside of gaming, many people might not actually need that much processing power, but when Windows Vista launches next year we have a feeling Microsoft will find lots of new ways to bring your computer to its knees. As always, though, we recommend people upgrade only when they personally are unhappy with the level of performance (or stability) that their current computer offers. Something better is always right around the corner.
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JarredWalton - Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - link
I thought about it, but figured for true budget I would go as low as I felt was possible without completely crippling the systems. :)Ealdric - Thursday, July 13, 2006 - link
I would be interested in some more recommmendations for socket 775 mobos with integrated graphics. I don't play gamnes at all, but I will be doing some video editing. I gather what I need is cpu speed and ram. I would like to be able to add a graphics card when/if Vista ever comes along, without having to replace the mobo.Thanks!
mindless1 - Wednesday, July 12, 2006 - link
The article makes some rather contrived presumptions about what a budget PC is, or forgot to put the word "gaming" in the article title.Many don't consider a $200 video card even a budget gaming card so the overall system config looks like a sacrifice of overall system specs and higher price just to game... which is fine if that's what you want but again it's not a budget system, rather a cost-optimized gaming system.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, July 12, 2006 - link
Page 3:"If you're thinking that $140-$195 on a graphics card is far from being a "budget" selection, our reasoning is that you're building a budget PC, but you also want to be able to play games. We assume that most people need a PC in their home these days, so when people consider a gaming PC versus one of the consoles like an Xbox 360, they often end up concluding that the consoles cost a lot less. We figure you're already spending about $500 for a PC whether or not you have a gaming console, so really you're only spending another $150 to turn your PC into something that can play most of today's games. If you would like better video performance, of course, you could also go with a faster graphics card and spend more money. Prices on the 7900 GT cards have dropped to $265 before rebates (about $240 after rebate), so graphics performance scales almost linearly with additional money. If you don't need graphics performance at all, you can of course go with an integrated graphics solution or something cheaper."
I tried to make it clear that the GPU isn't required unless you plan on gaming, though Vista will certainly change things in another 6-8 months. This is one option, and I expect people to read the whole article as advice rather than a firm recommendation. You can use different HDDs (I used WD becuase I had a couple available for benchmarks), GPUs (I had two XFX XXX cards), case, PSU, mobo, etc. In general performance will be similar, so this is a look at what performance you can get for $650 in games... or $500 if you drop the GPU and don't bother with games.
Paladin165 - Wednesday, July 12, 2006 - link
Everyone here seems to be mentioning WD hard drives, but I just had one fail on me after barely more than one year. It was one of their 1 year warranty drives too =(. So I replaced it with the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS 320GB with perpendicular recording. In reviews it has very high peak data transfer rates, and its only about $20 more than the WD 250 GB mentioned in the article, and it has a 5 year warranty.Also I was wondering if anyone had any ideas about how to build a case like Dell's big Optiplex cases. They are set up where the whole front and back of the case is perforated, the HS on the CPU is huge and has a 120mm fan on the side which pulls air right in the front of the case and right out the back. These things don't make a whisper, we have whole labs full of them at my university and they are completely silent. Does anyone know of a cheap case and HS with this kind of design?
DrMrLordX - Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - link
Not a bad article, but I don't understand the point. This is about the worst possible time to be building a new system, much less speccing one out with available parts. Unless that motherboard on the 805 system is Conroe-ready, I would't touch it with a 10-foot pole. Buying an 805 now is foolish on many different levels. The 915 is coming, and the 805 will be getting a price cut. X2s will be getting price cuts, too.JarredWalton - Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - link
Part of the idea is to cover X2 performance prior to the price cut. 915 isn't dramatically different (a bit faster, but really a budget PC is rarely bottlenecked by CPU unless you are doing serious number crunching). I'm certainly not suggesting people go out and buy right now, but given that we will be putting out reviews of Core 2 Duo soon, I figured a nice non-NDA look at the budget sector might be interesting. Anyway, Intel isn't really coming out with any truly *new* budget chips (i.e. based off of Core architecture) for a while, and the only thing on the horizon for AMD budget right now is price cuts (AFAIK).Calin - Wednesday, July 12, 2006 - link
I agree with that - the only thing that will change for the sample systems will be the price (maybe better mainboards). As Intel will have little production (about 30% of total) of the new microprocessors, they will probably be reserved to the likes of Dell, and retail market will see little availability and higher prices. Not at all something for the budget machines.Mozee - Monday, July 10, 2006 - link
Recently I've done a little looking around to see what kind of a budget gaming system I could build relatively cheap. Take a look at this little setup:(All parts priced at Newegg.com, except optical drive and case borrowed from article)
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 - 3800+ (2.4ghz/512k) Socket AM2 $141.99
Motherboard: MSI K9N NEO-F Socket AM2 (AMD 550 Chipset) $ 78.99
Graphics Card: eVGA e-GeForce 7600GT PCI-e 256MB $169.99
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar RE WD2500YD 250GB $ 84.99
Memory: GeiL GX21GB5300LDC DDR2-667 Dual Channel Kit $ 91.29
2x512MB 4-4-4-12
Optic Drive: NEC 3550A 16X DVD+/-RW $ 35.00
Case/PSU: Generic case with iCute 400W PSU $ 50.00
____________________________________________________________________________
Total Cost: $652.25
I picked the WD hard drive after the strong showing it had in a recent Anandtech article. The eVGA card wasn't the absolute cheapest 7600GT I found, but with a listed stock speed of 780/1560 nothing cheaper offered better than 700/1400 stock. If you would rather pick DDR2-800, I found Patriot eXtreme PDC21G6400LLK DDR2-800 1GB 4-4-4-12 sticks at NewEgg.com for $112.99, or the same in a 2x512MB kit for $117.99
Just some food for thought for anyone looking to build a budget gaming box.
kmmatney - Monday, July 10, 2006 - link
That's a pretty good setup. I'd save $30 or so and get an Athlon 64 3500+ Orleans, which only runs 200 MHz slower and can easily overclock. If you go down to a 3200+ in the cpu, you could possibly save enough money to get to a better class of graphics card - too bad there's no upgrade you can go to in the $200 price range (maybe the X1800GTO).