Weekly Buyer's Guide: Mid-Range System
by Evan Lieb on February 26, 2004 2:43 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Mid-Range System Summary
| Hardware | Component | Price |
| CPU & Cooling | AMD Athlon XP 2800+ | $120 |
| Motherboard | ABIT AN7 (nForce2 Ultra 400) | $103 |
| Memory | 2 X 256MB Corsair Value Select PC3200 (DDR400) | $84 |
| Video Card | 128MB PowerColor Radeon 9600 Pro | $130 |
| Monitor | Samsung 955DF DynaFlat CRT | $200 |
| Computer Case | CaseEdge TS1 (plus $30 360W PSU) | $70 |
| Sound Card | Onboard Realtek ALC658 | $0 |
| Speakers | Logitech Z640 5.1 | $63 |
| Networking | Onboard Realtek 8201BL 10/100 controller | $0 |
| Hard Drive | Western Digital 1200JB (80GB) | $88 |
| CD-RW | Plextor 52x24x52 (2MB | $44 |
| Bottom Line | - | $902 |
$902 is the final price of our system, not including any money you'll spend on software (Windows XP Home or Professional, Office, etc.) or a keyboard and mouse.
Overall, you're getting pretty much one of the best bang-for-the-buck systems on the market. You're getting a superb blend of performance, speed, and reliability, all in a very simple and easy-to-use package. Go build your system and let us know what you think.
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virtualgames0 - Friday, February 27, 2004 - link
Evan, nice articleThough I'd have to disagree with you on the sound. I personally listened to the Realtek codec with soundstorm on my NF7-S, SB Live! 5.1, and Analog Devices AD1985. I used my Sennheiser HD-497 to test sound quality. SBlive and realtek had similar sound quality, distorted and bright highs. While AD1985 sounded much better than all of them, crisper, sounded almost as good as my headphones plugged into my Onkyo amp.
Between the soundstorm and the SBLive, Soundstorm the most powerful audio chip made, which gives you much better gaming performance than SBLive. It also supports 60 directional sounds, a feature exclusive to the two most powerful soundchips, soundstorm and audigy 2.
Based on this, I cannot see how you can recommend SBLive5.1 as an option over soundstorm. I personally upgraded my motherboard just so I can get soundstorm.
AD1985 sounds flat out better than sound blaster live, I think anyone that heard both of them would agree with me.
gofor55 - Thursday, February 26, 2004 - link
I got suckered into buying the 7N400 Pro2 by all the "good reviews" only to find out that the GigaRAID on board controller is crap. It barely matches the performance of a single drive and writing to RAID is half the performance. Has any of these reviewers actually tested it, or do they just hype the "cool features". Let me know if they've got a fix I don't know about.Evan Lieb - Thursday, February 26, 2004 - link
gordon151,Good call. I was under the impression that the DSP in lower-end Audigys had to ability to output 24 bit sound. You're right, it's been corrected.
biostud666,
Where can you find 9800 non-Pro's? Barely any vendors carry them anymore, if any at all (I couldn't find one vendor). For whatever reason, lots of vendors carry the 9700 Pro.
kcbaltz,
The 2500+ is also another good bang for your buck CPU, but it just depends on how much you have to spend and if you're an overclocker.
mcveigh,
That's another good option.
brianbloom,
It's been corrected, thanks.
tallman45,
The P4P800 Deluxe retail boxes we've purchased have both brackets included.
tallman45 - Thursday, February 26, 2004 - link
It should be noted that the pricing of the P4P800 Deluxe does not include USB and Firewire brackets which would add to the $125 price pointkcbaltz - Thursday, February 26, 2004 - link
Why was a 2800+ chosen over 2500+? I only ask because much of what I have read on the forums seems to indicate people think the bang-for-buck sweet spot is on the 2500. Am I just out of date?SDA - Thursday, February 26, 2004 - link
#5, not in all or even the vast majority of "professional" software, and I don't think it's because of subpar floating-point performance, considering that AMD's implementation of SSE2 is supposedly identical. You could be onto something with the single-channel memory support, though. Perhaps it could also be that the P4 has little trouble keeping its deep pipeline full and its execution units busy with predictable data like that or something... yeah, that doesn't make much sense either, does it.brianbloom - Thursday, February 26, 2004 - link
Final summary page has a typo on it, showing the HD as only 40GB...T8000 - Thursday, February 26, 2004 - link
For the video card, I would suggest a Geforce FX 5900XT as runner up, as it gives a lot more performance then a Radeon 9700PRO for less then $199.In the CPU recommandation, there is a sidenote that Athlon 64 is the fastest CPU. This may be true if you play games, but for professional software, like video editing, the Athlon 64 suffers badly from its sub par SSE2 performance and its single channel memory support.
mcveigh - Thursday, February 26, 2004 - link
I think you should include a dvd reader/ cdrw drive instead of just a cdrw....a liteon model is only like $20 more than an plain cdrwbiostud666 - Thursday, February 26, 2004 - link
You can get an FX 5900 (non-XT/SE) for 183$ a radeon 9800 non-pro for 139$ so why select a radeon 9600 pro?