High-End Buyers' Guide: May 2007
by Dave Robinet and Jarred Walton on May 29, 2007 1:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Basic High-End Intel System
One of the few components held over from our October 2006 High-End Guide, the E6600 processor has dropped in price and remains the sweet spot for high-end purchasers at the $2,000 system range. The processor is known to be an excellent overclocker, and provides an even better value after Intel's price cuts. And speaking of price cuts, it's no secret that Intel is planning another round of price cuts in late July. If you can hold out another month or so, you just might be able to pick up a quad core Q6600 in place of the E6600 for a minor price increase.
Prices of 680i chipset-based boards have been dropping recently, which gives the EVGA 122-CK-NF63-TR its place in the baseline high-end Intel system. There were indeed some 975X motherboards which cost roughly the same, but as these implementations leveraged the ICH7 controller rather than the more-expensive ICH7R and an NVIDIA SLI currently continues to require NVIDIA chipset motherboards, it made sense to give the nod to the EVGA 680i solution.
There are potentially more overclock-friendly solutions like the ASUS P5B Deluxe, which costs roughly the same as the EVGA board and has a wider breadth of overclocking options. It runs on the P965 chipset, however, which sets it at a disadvantage in that one of the PCIe x16 slots can only run at x4 bandwidth, rather than giving each card the full x16. Again, such solutions also lack official NVIDIA SLI support so you would need to look at AMD graphics cards if you want to run a multi-GPU configuration. As mentioned already, however, running a single 8800 GTX in place of 8800 GTS SLI can save some money, avoid some headaches, and would be a great fit for a P965 platform.
We went with OCZ Flex XLC memory in the Intel high-end system. In our labs, this memory has reached 1T timings at speeds even slightly higher than 800MHz on 680i platforms. Your mileage may vary, of course, but this is an excellent pair of memory sticks at the sub-$180 price point.
The remaining components are all carried over from the AMD baseline system. The price for the Intel system comes in slightly higher than that of the AMD system, though the $2000 price point is maintained. Note that the Intel system configuration will show superior performance in virtually all applications compared to the AMD system, largely due to the Core 2 Duo's advantage over its Athlon X2 counterpart. If you're looking to overclock, the Core 2 Duo E6600 will also easily outperform any current AMD Athlon X2 processor, often by huge margins. It's not unreasonable to get 3.6 GHz and higher with E6600 chips when using an appropriate aftermarket CPU heatsink, and at present AMD lacks a dual core chip that can even hope to compete with such an overclocked processor.
This system gets Windows XP 32-bit, like the AMD baseline system. If you do choose to go above 2GB of memory, however, please ensure that you do move up to a 64-bit OS - preferably Vista at this point in time.
| Basic High-End Intel System | |||
| Hardware | Component | Price | Rebates |
| Processor | Core 2 Duo E6600 | $223 | - |
| Motherboard | EVGA 122-CK-NF63-TR | $159 | - |
| Memory | OCZ Flex XLC 2GB Kit DDR2 PC2-6400 | $179 | - |
| Video Card | 2x EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS 640MB | $700 | $60 |
| Hard Drive | Samsung SpinPoint HD501LJ 500GB | $112 | - |
| Optical Drive | Pioneer DVR-212BK | $42 | - |
| Operating System | Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2B (OEM) | $110 | - |
| System Total | $1525 | $1465 | |
| Complete Package | $2061-$3720 | $2001-$3660 | |
 |
Prices of 680i chipset-based boards have been dropping recently, which gives the EVGA 122-CK-NF63-TR its place in the baseline high-end Intel system. There were indeed some 975X motherboards which cost roughly the same, but as these implementations leveraged the ICH7 controller rather than the more-expensive ICH7R and an NVIDIA SLI currently continues to require NVIDIA chipset motherboards, it made sense to give the nod to the EVGA 680i solution.
There are potentially more overclock-friendly solutions like the ASUS P5B Deluxe, which costs roughly the same as the EVGA board and has a wider breadth of overclocking options. It runs on the P965 chipset, however, which sets it at a disadvantage in that one of the PCIe x16 slots can only run at x4 bandwidth, rather than giving each card the full x16. Again, such solutions also lack official NVIDIA SLI support so you would need to look at AMD graphics cards if you want to run a multi-GPU configuration. As mentioned already, however, running a single 8800 GTX in place of 8800 GTS SLI can save some money, avoid some headaches, and would be a great fit for a P965 platform.
We went with OCZ Flex XLC memory in the Intel high-end system. In our labs, this memory has reached 1T timings at speeds even slightly higher than 800MHz on 680i platforms. Your mileage may vary, of course, but this is an excellent pair of memory sticks at the sub-$180 price point.
The remaining components are all carried over from the AMD baseline system. The price for the Intel system comes in slightly higher than that of the AMD system, though the $2000 price point is maintained. Note that the Intel system configuration will show superior performance in virtually all applications compared to the AMD system, largely due to the Core 2 Duo's advantage over its Athlon X2 counterpart. If you're looking to overclock, the Core 2 Duo E6600 will also easily outperform any current AMD Athlon X2 processor, often by huge margins. It's not unreasonable to get 3.6 GHz and higher with E6600 chips when using an appropriate aftermarket CPU heatsink, and at present AMD lacks a dual core chip that can even hope to compete with such an overclocked processor.
This system gets Windows XP 32-bit, like the AMD baseline system. If you do choose to go above 2GB of memory, however, please ensure that you do move up to a 64-bit OS - preferably Vista at this point in time.
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JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - link
Yup. Sorry - missed doubling that one.Dave Robinet - Thursday, May 31, 2007 - link
Actually, no - rebate terms are "one per household":http://images10.newegg.com/uploadfilesfornewegg/re...">Rebate Details
imaheadcase - Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - link
I been fighting the urge to just purchase this monitor since price is pretty high. But I hear nothing but good things about it and this seals the deal..1080p rez? Yes please! :D
Crittias - Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - link
How close are we to a high-def drive being affordable on the PC? I could see myself watching high-def movies on a 24inch monitor if the drives we in the $100 range.rgsaunders - Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - link
Please don't mix RMS power ratings and Peak Power ratings in the same review. Use RMS only, its the proper standard for high end audio, peak power ratings are inflated and normally inaccurate, and should only be used on the cheap plastic speakers sold at Walmart as technical specifications are meaningless for them. The figure you quoted is not accurate for this system, you quoted what might be thought to be peak to peak power but actually is not. RMS=.707 peak, peak to peak= 2x peak. Anandtech has normally maintained a relatively high technical standard, please don't change that by pandering to those to whom big numbers are more important than quality.JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - link
We don't normally spend a lot of effort on speaker reviews. The Logitech speakers are all very good for their price range. If you want home theater quality, we don't tend to venture into that market. I'm quite sure there are any number of people out there that know far more about speakers and ratings and such than I do (and probably Dave as well).Le Québécois - Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - link
Any idea of the noise level for the Antec Nine Hundred? How does it compare to other case like the quiet Thermaltake Aguila?Now I know you don't recommend the HD 2900XT right now but I was wondering what PSU you would chose for a power aungry card like that using PCIe 2.0 connectors? The Enermax Infinity 720W looks good but do you have any other PCIe 2.0 PSU you would recommend?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - link
I don't know if it's any good (probably), but you might try the Antec TPQ-850 is a 2x8-pin and 2x6-pin PCIe 2.0 PSU. That's the most reasonably priced model I've seen. If you plan on quad core and overclocking along with 2900 CrossFire, you had better get as much PSU as you can find. I think you could probably break 850W power draw with such a configuration.CK804 - Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - link
http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php...">One last thing to add.I would recommend a Corsair 620HX for your configuration. It was the quietest PSU tested by SPCR. I have the 520 watt model and have nothing but good things to say about it.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - link
Sort of like we mentioned on the base configuration of page 6, you mean? Except there is no way I would even think of running quad core with 2900 XT CrossFire with that PSU. A single 8800 GTX or 2900 XT? Sure, but not two.