Weekly Buyer's Guide: Mid-Range System - March 2004
by Evan Lieb on March 24, 2004 2:27 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) | $102 |
| Memory | 2 X 256MB Mushkin Basic Green PC3200 (DDR400) | $90 |
| Video Card | 128MB PowerColor Radeon 9600 Pro | $129 |
| Monitor | Samsung 955DF DynaFlat CRT | $200 |
| Computer Case | CaseEdge TS1 (plus $30 360W PSU) | $70 |
| Sound Card | Onboard | $0 |
| Speakers | Creative Labs SBS270 | $20 |
| Networking | Onboard | $0 |
| Hard Drive | Western Digital 800JB (80GB) | $70 |
| CD-RW | Sony 52x32x52 CD-RW | $32 |
| Bottom Line | - | $833 |
$833 is the final price of our mid-range system this week, not including any money that you'll spend on software (Windows XP Home or Professional, Office, etc.) or a keyboard and mouse.
It's great to see how little you can spend on a system these days while still being able to wring great performance from it. For $833, you'd be hard pressed to find a faster system.
Now go build your system and let us know what you think in our comments section.
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reep - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link
i would save ~50$ by going for the 2500+ instead of the 2800+ - the difference in performance is hardly worth it. instead, that money could be brought to much better use by spending it on 2x512mb of ram.NeoGodless - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link
I agree with #10... this is really the mid range buyers guide. In addition, the dual channel motherboards I've had experience with simply need at least memory slots filled to enable dual channel, and adding additional memory does not disable it.magratton - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link
I think many of you are missing the point here. If you want to do the AXPM 2500 and overclock it then that is the "Overclockers" Guide. This guide is for folks who don't know much (a little more than the average joe per se) and want a good system for their needs. To that end these recommendations are pretty decent to me and will certainly make the average gamer around town looking to save a few bucks plenty happy for a while. Either way, people will be much happier with the cost and effectiveness of this system in the long run than the stuff they can pick up at their local (and online) mass-market dealer.As to the TogdorJW's comments on RAM, yes, 512MB is really the MINIMUM nowadays, and some note should be given that if you are using this for gaming spending a few more dollars to get to 1GB RAM should be looked into.
Myrandex - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link
I would get the <$145 Radein 9800se 256bit 128MB from newegg and softmod it to a full blown 9800, and ditto with previous posts about the 2500+ CPUs instead of the 2800, and on the alternative choice I would put the new Athlon64 2800+ instead of that P4.Jason
mlsaxx - Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - link
TrogdorJW - Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - link
Oh, one other thing. I know this is the mid-range, and an extra $100 on RAM is a lot of money. However, it really has to be recommended for anyone that does a lot of gaming, especially on the Athlon XP system. Since you lose dual-channel if you occupy all three memory slots, the 512 MB configurations you recommend are going to be lower performing if they are later upgraded. (I would love for you to do some benchmarks on this, incidentally!) This isn't a real problem for the P4 alternative, since you can upgrade to 4x256 for 1 GB of RAM when it suits you.Anyway, for gamers looking at spending the extra money on the Radeon 9700 Pro graphics card, they really need to be aware of how many games are starting to break the 512 MB threshhold. I have 1 GB of RAM and a Ti4200 graphics card, and Battlefield: Vietnam and UT2K4 both run perfectly fine for me at 1024x768 and moderate detail. Others running faster graphics cards (9800 Pro) with 512 MB of RAM are posting a lot of complaints in the BF:V and UT2K4 forums. It might bump the price up another $100, but spending $90 on 2x256 MB of RAM for an Athlon XP and then ditching that to go up to 2x512 in a few months would not be cool.
TrogdorJW - Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - link
Sounds like the new Athlon 64 2800+ will probably become the alternative CPU/mobo next time the mid-range system comes around. Not sure about the longevity of that solution, but then, nothing lasts forever. Highly mature and stable PCI/AGP is probably better than version 1.0 PCIe and DDR2 for the next 18 months.For the rest, this is the mid-range system *without* overclocking. In that segment, the 2800+ is a pretty good choice, although the 2600+ is also an option. Can't complain too much about the choices, although I'm certainly itching to see what sort of overclocks can be achieved with the new A64 2800+. :)
PrinceGaz - Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - link
You could pay more for an XP3000+, or spend just $80 on an XP2500+ and overclock it a bit but thats not what I'd get.I'd spend $95 on an XP-M 2500+ (still saving over twenty dollars compared to the recommended XP2800+), set the voltage to the normal 1.65V of an XP2500+ (non-mobile), set the FSB to 200MHz and the multiplier to 11, and bingo -- you've got an XP3200+ :)
gofor55 - Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - link
Unless you have RAID 0 test results on the ITE based GigaRAID onboard controller, you need to STOP touting this feature. I own a 7N400 Pro 2 and the GigaRAID performance is terrible. It's even a crummy when used as an IDE interface. I had to disable it and add a RocketRAID controller.wassup4u2 - Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - link
Why the AXP 2800+ instead of the 2500+? The 2500 is tons cheaper ($81 retail, shipped on newegg), and is only 250MHz slower. It still offers the 333MHz FSB and 512Kb L2 cache. Plus, it's very easily overclockable to the 2.08GHz that the 2800+ offers, even with the retail cooler. Get a better cooler and, presto, you can have yourself a nice little $81 Athlon XP 3200+.