Final Words
Most users that email questions about building a computer system are planning to build a midrange computer system. With a broad price range of $800 to $1800 this covers a huge number of potential choices. With the launch of Phenom II all of our thinking about systems from Intel and AMD got rearranged. Further changes came with price cuts from both sides. The end result is that Intel and AMD are now competitive in the midrange segment of the computer market. This parity created by Phenom II has had a dramatic impact in lowering midrange CPU prices. The result is that midrange computers are an exceptional value in today's computer market.
The best evidence of the value you will find in today's midrange systems is to compare prices to systems in our guide published in January. Our price range then was $1000 to $2000 - stretched to include a Phenom II and Intel Core i7 systems at the top of midrange. This guide is $800 to $1800 and includes all Phenom II systems for AMD and a Core i7 system at the top of the Intel midrange. Generally components are either the same or have been upgraded. The result is comparable complete systems that cost $1150 today that were $1500 just three months ago. That is a price drop of over 20% in a very short time frame.
Certainly, processors and DDR3 memory represent the biggest price drops in the last three months. The always competitive GPU or video card market has also brought us lower prices compared to 3 months ago. Monitors are also getting cheaper, higher resolution, and larger to the point that you will be truly surprised at the low prices if you haven't shopped for monitors in a while. Hard drives also seem to be caught in competitive pricing squeezes and seem to drop a little every time we prepare a new system buyers guide. However, cases, power supplies, optical drives, and I/O devices have changed little over that time frame. Not surprisingly, the OS cost always seems the same if you choose Microsoft. That could change a little when Windows 7 launches in the future but we could end up with an even more expensive Windows 7 in the future. There is the option to go to Linux, Ubuntu, or some other OS instead, but many will not seriously consider this option. Perhaps they should as the no-cost operating systems do continue to get better and easier to use with each new incarnation.
The current world economic woes are having their impact on the computer industry as well as most other industries. As often happens in difficult economic times price competition often becomes fierce, and the large and strong are more able to play in that environment It is likely that the bad economy will take its toll and some players will cease to exist. That is simple economics, and it is being played very hard right now. That doesn't mean everything is doom and gloom because great values for you are the silver lining to this story. The computer industry has always been about increasing value and bang for your buck. Moore's "Law" may not be exactly in force any more, but there is little doubt that today you can get more for your money than ever in a computer system. Smart buyers who still have a job (or a rich grandmother) will buy now for the value and be rewarded with terrific performance for their investment.
The point of all these buyers guides and component selections should be very clear. Now is a great time to build a value midrange or performance midrange system, with either an Intel or AMD processor. The value for your dollar is as good as we have ever seen. Those are great reasons to take a close look at replacing or updating your computer system.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
73 Comments
View All Comments
RadnorHarkonnen - Wednesday, April 8, 2009 - link
Don't be Pedantic. Chill Out mates.I have a X2 4800+ OCed to 3Ghz. I game on it, i have a small file server on it, an exchange server always rolling, I GIMP some fotos, use sum torrentz, test like things i have fun with on my VMware, the wife is always seeing a movie of some sort (Desperate housewives or sex in the city, or some crap like that) plugged via HDMI to my TV. And much more...
A bit of this, a bit of that.
I personally like his rig. I wouldn't buy one like his, but hey there are other priorities. Maybe in the summer ill buy another for crossfire.
Wineohe - Tuesday, April 7, 2009 - link
Hmm. Not sure I get 1TB Barracuda. Sometimes price isn't everything. I guess you gotta spread the love.Wesley Fink - Wednesday, April 8, 2009 - link
The Seagate is now quite reliable and fast. The speed is a true 7200rpm, and not a "green" 5200rpm. Cache is 32MB, and not 16MB like many competing drives.Warranty is reduced to 3 years from the previous 5 years, but warranty service and replacement is very easy directly with Seagate. Seagate still offers the Enterprise version of this drive with 5-year warranty for $140, but if truth be know it is the same drive with a longer warranty and a higher price to pay for the longer coverage.
You can pay more for the same features and specifications. As we have said many times, you are generally safe with an HD from the major players and you can shop on price as long as specs are the same. There are good WD choices as well.
MadMan007 - Wednesday, April 8, 2009 - link
Seriously? Did you just say it's a great drive based upon paper specs? Features and specifications do not equal real world performance. Seagate drives after the 7200.10s should not be recommended. Supposed reliability issue aside the firmware is heavily slanted toward reads and the drives perform middle of the pack overall when looking at a wide range of real world uses. I understand for an article like this there's a need to stick to a strict price point but anyone who wants a 7200RPM 1TB drive ought to look elsewhere (WD drives are great atm) or if they don't need the space they'd be better served by a 7200RPM 640GB WD drive.Wesley Fink - Wednesday, April 8, 2009 - link
We use both the recent Seagate and WD 1TB drives. Both have performed well in the labs.MadMan007 - Wednesday, April 8, 2009 - link
Then you aren't testing them well enough but that's ok I've never read Anandtech for HD reviews. Heck the last non-SSD review is almost a year old and that was the V-Raptor, before that there is a 1TB drive review which is thoroughly outdated. Obviously in fairlyland everyone has only SSDs by now, the SSD articles are intriguing but don't reflect what people actually buy for storage as your own guides show.MadMan007 - Wednesday, April 8, 2009 - link
Sorry the above reads more rantishly than I meant it. Anyway my point was that quoting a bunch of paper specs doesn't mean much.erple2 - Friday, April 10, 2009 - link
Some thing that seems to get lost a lot is the question for the normal user:"How much faster is this drive in the stuff I care about?"
Benchmarks are good, I suppose, but they're also ridiculously non-linear. a two fold increase in sequential read performance in HD Tach doesn't translate into a two fold reduction in windows boot up time (or application startup time).
Maybe they are linear, but only with extenuating circumstances - If I have an old drive that loads application X in 20 seconds, getting a more recent drive could reduce the load time by 2 seconds. Getting a drive that's "twice" as fast as the slower new drive may reduce the application loading time by twice the increase, not half the time - the app now loads in 16 seconds rather than 18 seconds.
I dunno. It seems that the more I look at "real world" scenarios (which I understand are very hard to quantify and benchmark - they're essentially wall clock timings), the difference between 2 drives of the same rotational speed are marginal. Heck, even the difference between a 7200RPM drive and a 10k drive seems awfully marginal.
How often do I copy a single huge (on the order of 1 gigabyte) file that's stored sequentially? I dunno. Most of my data is lots of files that are smaller than 10 MiB (music and pictures), with significant numbers that are in the < 1 MiB range (everything else that isn't MP3's or pictures).
Huh.. Now I sound like I'm ranting.
However, if Anandtech is using the drives all the time in their test systems (and they haven't failed), then I'd believe that they're at least reliable. They may not be faster than a couple of Raptors in Raid 0, but from what else I've read, that's a total waste of time and money for my usage patterns (which don't include running a heavily used database, or other server application).
marc1000 - Tuesday, April 7, 2009 - link
wow, while I read the article I lost the 1st comment spot.. hehewell, I read a lot of these guides here at AT, and should shay the components choices are generally good. too bad I live in a country other than USA or England, so I can never buy those parts with the "real" pricing, instead I always pay higher for newer parts... it's a joke for us.......
anyway, I would like to say to anyone interested that these new CPUs and GPUs are really terrific performers. Today I have a fairly simple Core2Duo e7200 (2.6ghz 3mb cache) paired with a Radeon HD3850 and 4GB RAM. I never could completely stress this simple system... even gaming, I can run almost all games at a very good quality (22" LCD monitor with 16x10res), except for CRYSIS of course (but I don't like it anyway).
ssj4Gogeta - Wednesday, April 8, 2009 - link
"too bad I live in a country other than USA or England, so I can never buy those parts with the "real" pricing, instead I always pay higher for newer parts"same here. :( Especially when a new graphics card is launched. The price is as high as 2x the price in the US.