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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
56 Comments
View All Comments
Calin - Wednesday, July 12, 2006 - link
We were promised reviews of micro ATX mainboards a while back (hopefully with integrated video performance too, dual and single channel :) ). The article should be in the works now.Anyway, none of the integrated graphics/microATX boards I looked upon (from MSI, Asus etc) did have anything in the way of overclocking/overvolting/undervolting/...
I'm waiting, thanks
Rix2357 - Monday, July 10, 2006 - link
Most of these motherboards are decently cheap, but I wonder if they are as stable as some more well established brands. Of course, I go way back and a mantra that I've heard over and over, for stability Asus and Intel motherboards are the only way to go. While the DFI board in the test could be reasonably expected to be relatively stable, I am unsure about the biostar motherboard.My case in point from way back. The ECS K7S5A motherboard for a Socket A Athlon motherboard was supposedly one of the best, but it still had it's quirks. It's no where near as stable as the Asus Williamete motherboard at that time. It also has cold boot issues that numerous different bioses have never fixed. Hard drive detection with a third party IDE controller could be problematic at best.
Calin - Wednesday, July 12, 2006 - link
I have an ECS K7S5A mainboard, and its stability was good. Anyway, that was around the time when even top mainboards had one or two errors in 72 hours of benchmarks/stability checks.I would say Gigabyte boards are good too - I've had not so positive experiences with Foxconn boards.
JarredWalton - Monday, July 10, 2006 - link
The Biostar + PD805 has been in use for roughly six months, without any noticeable problems. The DFI Infinity has also been in use for a while without problems. AM2 is too new to say how it is in terms of stability, but I definitely enjoy the extra features (because I am one of those people that has GbE running through the house). If your primary concern is stability, you'd probably want to skip out on overclocking anyway. One of the biggest difficulties in overclocking is determining long-term "stable" settings. It can take months to get what you feel is an optimally stable system, and minor tweaks to voltages, memory timings, bus speeds, etc. can turn a crash-prone system fully stable (or vice versa).Avalon - Monday, July 10, 2006 - link
If these are budget considerations, why is 2-2-2 DDR memory and an XXX XFX listed in there? You can get an eVGA 7600GT CO for less than $150AR from time to time, and 1GB of CAS 2.5 memory will only set you back $90 and be practically as fast. That's $60 saved.Gary Key - Monday, July 10, 2006 - link
Jarred explained this on page 2. The memory selected for the S754 system is what we had available at the time for 2-2-2 operation. You are right that additional money could be saved for a minor performance delta. Since this article was looking at budget gaming performance, the XFX video card was chosen since it was still in our price range and is factory overclocked allowing a small increase in performance for those uncomfortable with overclocking the GPU. We mentioned that with rebates just about any of the 7600GT cards could be had for around $140~$160.
This article was designed to provide an umbrella look at what is available in the $650 price range and how it performs with today's game titles. We certainly understand that additional money could be saved or could be spent depending upon the individual's objective in building a system. As an example, on the S754 system you could have spent a little less on the memory but could have taken those savings and applied them to a better audio solution resulting in the same end figure. Some people would rather have the improved memory performance and live with the on-board audio. In the end, for about $650 you can build a decent machine today and there are an incredible amount of component choices that allow you to do this.