Buyer's Guide - May 2000

High-end Gaming System
The purpose of this system is simple – maximum frame rates at all costs.  Of course, we already have a “cost is no object” dream system, so we’ve decided to shoot for a price in the $3500 range on the high-end gaming system.  That price is without floppy, keyboard, mouse, or software.  Even though it’s not in the price, we will recommend an OS configuration.

Processor – Intel Pentium III 733 - $600
We choose the Pentium III 733 again for our second dream system.  Our benchmarks have shown that the Pentium III 733 outpaces the comparably priced Athlon 800 in Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament.  The Athlon 800 takes a slight lead in Expendable, but needs the clock speed advantage to do so.  That 2/5 speed cache of the Athlon holds it back – when Thunderbird arrives, the tables could very easily turn.

Overclockers can’t hope to push their 733’s to over 800 MHz without resorting to exotic cooling.  While overclocking is not guaranteed, we’ve had good results with the Coppermine CPU’s. 

For more information on all Pentium III's, read our Pentium III 1GHz Review.

Motherboard – Gigabyte GA-6VX-4X - $120
Since we’ve got a Pentium III 733, we need a motherboard with official 133 MHz FSB support.  We can strike the i440BX due to its lack of official 133 MHz FSB. The i810 is obviously out of the question thanks to its slow integrated video.  Intel’s i820 is out due to the incredibly high cost of RDRAM and its horrendous performance with SDRAM. 

Intel’s i815 on the horizon looks promising – it has support for PC133 SDRAM, official 133 MHz FSB, AGP 4X, Ultra ATA 66, and Intel’s Accelerated Hub Architecture (AHA).  But it is unlikely that we will see the i815 until June of this year at the earliest. 

That leaves us with one clear choice – the VIA Apollo Pro 133A with it’s AGP 4X, Ultra ATA 66, and official 133 MHz FSB support.  After our recent roundup, we found the 6VX-4X to be the best overall VIA 133A board.  We mentioned it in the review, but for now, we can’t offer a solid recommendation of the ASUS P3V4X due to its performance issues with the latest AGP GART drivers.  You can get by with an older version, but we don’t consider that an ideal solution by any means.  Read the full review for details.  As it stands, we’ll stick with the Gigabyte 6VX-4X, which is also a very solid board.

Once again, AC97 support is included onboard, with the option for integrated Aureal 8810 hardware sound.  However, we’ll disable the host-based sound and pass on the Aureal 8810 in favor of choosing our own sound card later.

For more information, read our Gigabyte GA-6VX-4X Review.

Memory – 256MB Corsair or Mushkin PC133 SDRAM (2x128MB DIMM’s) – $250
Even though memory is relatively cheap these days, 256MB is more than enough.  We could have dropped down to 128MB, but the savings didn’t justify the performance.  In any case, as this is our high-end gaming machine, there’s room to move in the budget. 

As for the exact brand of memory, we recommend Corsair or Mushkin modules.  We use them in our test systems and have had absolutely no problems with them. 

Video card – ASUS V6800 Deluxe  - $330
The GeForce DDR is clearly the leading 3D graphics chipset at the moment.  Not only does the GeForce offer the only fully functional GPU in the market right now, but it also has the highest fillrate at 480 megapixels/s.  DDR SDRAM insures that you’ll be able to reap the full benefits of the GeForce at higher resolutions and color depths – how does 60fps gaming at 1024x768 in 32-bit color sound? 

The ASUS V6800 Deluxe was also able to stand out from the crowd in our recent roundup with its video capture and hardware monitoring capabilities.  The video capture options speak for themselves, but the hardware monitoring enables ASUS’s Smart Doctor Utility to dynamically overclock your card, while monitoring its temperature to prevent any issues that can come with overclocking a device too far.

Look for all this to change next month when the GeForce2 GTS and Voodoo 5 become available. If you can wait, hold off for one of those cards or for the price drops that will accompany their release. For more information on the ASUS V6800 Deluxe, read our DDR GeForce Roundup and our ASUS V6800 Deluxe Review.

Monitor – iiYama VisionMaster PRO 450 - $650
Using a Mitsubishi Diamondtron NF, the iiYama VisionMaster Pro 450 provides a perfectly flat display surface using the same technology in Sony’s FD Trinitron models, but at a lower cost.  The VisionMaster PRO 450 is a 19” monitor and has been highly acclaimed here on AnandTech and by owners alike.  If you’ve got the funds, we highly recommend you go with the 22” VisionMaster PRO 510 for about $1000.

For more information, read our iiYama VisionMaster PRO 450 and VisionMaster PRO 510 Reviews.