Budget Buyer's Guide - October 2006
by Jarred Walton on October 25, 2006 8:10 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Conclusion
Unlike our last high-end guide, we have chosen not to bother with a large list of alternatives this time. There are always choices to be made, and there are compromises in any budget computer. In many cases, this year's budget configurations are just last year's midrange offerings, with a few minor tweaks. Out of the four configurations we put together, the baseline builds had an eye more towards cutting costs whereas the upgraded configurations looked to add more performance and features. As the price nears $500, the differences between one component and another similar component often become small. Should you get brand A or brand B memory? Who makes the best motherboard? Which hard drive is better? There are definitely still differences, but we would mostly concern ourselves with the features you may or may not be getting as "best" becomes more of a marketing term in the budget sector than anything concrete. Given that the performance of most budget systems is going to be a lot like last year's midrange models, an alternative to building a new budget system is to instead look for a good price on a used midrange system from a year or two ago. You may not get the latest socket, memory, GPU, hard drive, etc., but you might also get better overall performance for less money. There are, after all, many different ways to part with $600.
As is often the case, two of the builds today stand out as being better overall choices than the others. If you are looking to cut costs and stick closer to $500, we would currently give that market to the AMD configurations. True, you don't get a dual core processor, but that will add at least $50 to the total system cost, and a lot of people simply don't use their computers in such a way that dual cores are necessary. Athlon 64 processors are still very fast, and the single core chips are a great bargain compared to what the cost last year. In fact, Athlon 64 chips are so cheap now that we see little reason to consider getting a Sempron processor. On the other end of the spectrum, if you're looking to upgrade performance slightly, the most sensible decision is to go with a budget Core 2 Duo configuration. This is especially useful if you do use a lot of applications that will benefit from multiple processor cores, as Core 2 Duo is currently the fastest dual core architecture available.
Finally, let us reiterate once again that it is virtually impossible to cover every reasonable component choice at a given price range with a single buyer's guide. That's why we have all of our individual review sections, with these guides being more a look at what sort of system we would put together at the given price points. There are plenty of possibilities that we didn't even touch in this guide. For example, you might want to go with a cheaper processor and other components in order to max out your GPU, with the aim of getting maximum gaming performance. How do you balance that so that your CPU is still fast enough to keep your GPU fed? Feel free to ask questions in the comments section, and we will do our best to respond - or you can always use email if you prefer. And if you think that prices are currently too high, there's no harm in waiting as something better is almost always right around the corner, and other than a few periodic spikes like we've seen with memory, component costs will trend downwards over time. Thanks for reading, and suggestions are always welcome!
Unlike our last high-end guide, we have chosen not to bother with a large list of alternatives this time. There are always choices to be made, and there are compromises in any budget computer. In many cases, this year's budget configurations are just last year's midrange offerings, with a few minor tweaks. Out of the four configurations we put together, the baseline builds had an eye more towards cutting costs whereas the upgraded configurations looked to add more performance and features. As the price nears $500, the differences between one component and another similar component often become small. Should you get brand A or brand B memory? Who makes the best motherboard? Which hard drive is better? There are definitely still differences, but we would mostly concern ourselves with the features you may or may not be getting as "best" becomes more of a marketing term in the budget sector than anything concrete. Given that the performance of most budget systems is going to be a lot like last year's midrange models, an alternative to building a new budget system is to instead look for a good price on a used midrange system from a year or two ago. You may not get the latest socket, memory, GPU, hard drive, etc., but you might also get better overall performance for less money. There are, after all, many different ways to part with $600.
As is often the case, two of the builds today stand out as being better overall choices than the others. If you are looking to cut costs and stick closer to $500, we would currently give that market to the AMD configurations. True, you don't get a dual core processor, but that will add at least $50 to the total system cost, and a lot of people simply don't use their computers in such a way that dual cores are necessary. Athlon 64 processors are still very fast, and the single core chips are a great bargain compared to what the cost last year. In fact, Athlon 64 chips are so cheap now that we see little reason to consider getting a Sempron processor. On the other end of the spectrum, if you're looking to upgrade performance slightly, the most sensible decision is to go with a budget Core 2 Duo configuration. This is especially useful if you do use a lot of applications that will benefit from multiple processor cores, as Core 2 Duo is currently the fastest dual core architecture available.
Finally, let us reiterate once again that it is virtually impossible to cover every reasonable component choice at a given price range with a single buyer's guide. That's why we have all of our individual review sections, with these guides being more a look at what sort of system we would put together at the given price points. There are plenty of possibilities that we didn't even touch in this guide. For example, you might want to go with a cheaper processor and other components in order to max out your GPU, with the aim of getting maximum gaming performance. How do you balance that so that your CPU is still fast enough to keep your GPU fed? Feel free to ask questions in the comments section, and we will do our best to respond - or you can always use email if you prefer. And if you think that prices are currently too high, there's no harm in waiting as something better is almost always right around the corner, and other than a few periodic spikes like we've seen with memory, component costs will trend downwards over time. Thanks for reading, and suggestions are always welcome!
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
I did add a mention of the overclocking limitations of the board, which are mostly caused by the lack of voltage adjustments. Gary has it for review and hasn't had any problems with memory incompatibility. If you're after great overclocking, uATX and IGP solutions are rarely a good way to go. True, they could be made to overclock better than most do, but enthusiasts looking at overclocking generally don't want uATX systems -- or at least that's the general attitude of the motherboard manufacturers.I've got the 939 ASUS board and it overclocks to the maximum BIOS limit of 240 HTT bus without too much trouble. I'm using it in my HTPC system and have been for a while. There are always going to be compromises made in budget systems. We chose to downplay overclocking support in order to get a DVI port and decent IGP. You could go with something like the DFI board and a 7300TC card for $30 more and get much better overclocking. You could spend $10 more on the Abit board and get better (but not great) overclocking. However, there are a ton of people out there that don't want to overclock. Just because a board has poor overclocking support doesn't mean a lot of people won't like the other features. That's my take anyway.
--Jarred
bzo - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
Jarred,one more thing. If you guys have this board for review, PLEASE bring to ASUS's attention the lack of the HTT multipler in the BIOS and the voltage incompatibility with DDR2-800. Just being able to overclock at all would be great! Queries to ASUS support have gone nowhere.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
Gary is working on a review. I initially screwed up on my overclock percentage and said 20%. Gary says he topped out currently at around 225 MHz HTT, which is 12.5%, and I changed the text to ~10%. I agree that the Abit board looks to be a better overclocker (performance at stock levels is going to be about the same), but at that point you're looking at a $100 "budget" motherboard and the $70 options begin to gain my interest. I think the Biostar TForce 6100 might overclock a bit better than the ASUS, so I would be more inclined to go down to that and lose the DVI port rather than spend any more on the motherboard.bzo - Thursday, October 26, 2006 - link
great, look forward to seeing the review. That's the best overclock I've heard about for this board. Do you guys have access to an unreleased BIOS or something? Or maybe Gary has some tweaks or tips for getting there?Here's a recent review where the reviewer gets to 213Mhz, which is more typical in my experience.
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/966/5/page_5_bios...">Tweaktown review
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 26, 2006 - link
Gary tends to work magic with overclocking, so hopefully he can shed some light on the matter. I'm pretty sure he's using a public BIOS, though... maybe just better RAM and other components are playing a role?bzo - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
Hi Jarred, granted the focus of this budget build is not overclocking, but it doesn't sound like you have hands on use with the AM2 M2NPV. You mention a potential 20% overclock, where it's actually closer to 5%. As far as I know, the 939 version does let you change the HTT mulitiplier which is why you can get to 240fsb. The AM2 BIOS is missing this adjustment. As we all know, the HTT bus not take to running over spec well, which is the biggest limitation of this board, not the voltage adjustments. Most people can not get this board past 210fsb.If you don't believe the problems with this board, just check out the reviews at Newegg or the user forums at asus.com.
Also, while the Abit is not as good an overclocker as say my Lanparty NF4-Ultra, it sure looks like a pretty good performer to me. People successfully running > 300fsb, CPU voltage to 2.0v, ram voltage to 2.5v, and many of the obscure adjustments I see on my DFI. Well worth an extra $10. Heck, the silent heatpipe chipset cooler on the abit is worth the extra $ alone.
BladeVenom - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
There really is no price difference between the upgraded budget system and the midrange system. I think it would be more useful to keep a clear price divide between the different categories. Otherwise you might as well just call them the same thing and save yourself half an article.KAZANI - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
Agreed. The upgraded recommendation is totally redundant.JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
The idea is to purchase the upgrades you want/need. I don't think you need every more expensive option, so maybe just the CPU, mobo, and GPU. We do feel moving towards midrange will get you a better overall config, and part of the problem is that there really isn't much of a difference between an upgraded budget setup and a midrange computer. If we left off the upgrades altogether, though, I don't think people would like that.stmok - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
...On Page 6, under the Budget Case and Accessories package, you have Linux and OpenOffice in the package.Shouldn't you include MS Office under the Windows XP Budget Case and Accessories package?
Its not exactly a "fair comparison" to have one solution include an office suite, but the other without.
The rest of the article seems fine. Interestingly, I'm also considering the ASUS M2NPV-VM for a budget setup. :) (But with a cheap as Sempron for now).
I noticed in the Upgraded Budget AMD Athlon X2 AM2 System on page 4, you suggested a X2 3800+...I'm assuming that's the regular 89W ones, right? How much are the 65W versions? (Reason I'm asking because down here in Australia, the price difference is about AUD$5 to AUD$7).