Weekly Buyer's Guide: High End System - March 2004
by Evan Lieb on April 2, 2004 11:25 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Memory
Recommendation: 2 X 512MB Mushkin PC3500 Level One Dual Pack (CAS2)Price: $239 shipped
While companies like Corsair, OCZ and now Kingston are heavy favorites among high end memory consumers, Mushkin is also starting to gain favor rapidly. In the last few months, we've been using OCZ's Platinum modules as the standard for a majority of AnandTech's testbeds, but we have also been using Mushkin Level One memory (mostly Level II actually). Unfortunately, it is getting harder and harder to find dual packs nowadays, but Mushkin Level One Dual Packs are available at large vendors like Axion and Newegg, so they're still out there. We've been able to do lots of testing with these specific PC3500 modules and they indeed run stably at PC3500 (433MHz DDR) on many currently available motherboards. There are many PC3500 modules that aren't capable of reliable DDR433 speeds on popular motherboards, so be wary. But motherboards such as the ASUS K8V Deluxe and ABIT IC7-G will run these modules very well, so we suggest that you take a look at them when purchasing your motherboard. However, don't get confused. PC3500 is not an officially sanctioned JEDEC spec, and therefore there are no motherboards on the market which can claim that they officially support PC3500 speeds. PC3500 is quite easily attainable with modern motherboards, but just be aware that PC3200, not PC3500, is the highest speed that your motherboard manufacturer will officially support under warranty.
Alternative: 2 X 512MB OCZ PC3700 GOLD Revision 2 (CAS2.5)
Price: $269 shipped
After developing a reputation based on shoddy business practices, not to mention shoddy memory, OCZ has come roaring back and has gained wide acceptance among enthusiasts and average users alike after many months of wary purchasing and close inspection by hardware web sites like AnandTech. We've raved about OCZ modules in many reviews over the last few months (like this one), and have been extremely pleased with the results that we've been getting. OCZ modules have gone from disappointing and unreliable to impressive and dependable in what seems like an overnight transformation. OCZ still has a ways to go to gain acceptance among doubters who have never tried their memory or continue to hold onto conspiracy theories about their link to the OCZ of old, but we aren't placing OCZ's GOLD Rev. 2 PC3700 modules as runner-up based on whim, so take that to heart. The GOLD series is capable of a "low" latency of CAS2.5 at DDR466 speeds (PC3700) and has a huge ceiling for overclockers. If you're not an overclocker, then obviously the GOLD series will not be of much value to you. If you are overclocking, just remember that you take a risk by overclocking your memory, both in terms of voiding warranties and damaging hardware. Beginners need not apply here for overclocking.
Video
Recommendation: 128MB PowerColor Radeon 9800 Pro, DVI, TV-outPrice: $206 shipped
If you read our last high end Buyer's Guide (formerly named "Cutting Edge" Buyer's Guide), you would remember that we recommended the Radeon 9800XT. However, we wanted to bring the price down a bit for our new High End guides because we felt that our previous High End guide's final price was just a bit too high. Since it's a well known fact that there is very little difference in performance between the 9800 Pro and 9800XT, we think it's quite reasonable to recommend the 9800 Pro for this guide. It's not the fastest video card on the market, something you would expect AnandTech to recommend for a high end guide, but it's darn close and it's over $200 less than the 9800XT. Taking all of this data into account, we simply can't recommend the 9800XT. However, it is a reasonable alternative for a high end system.
Alternative: 256MB PowerColor Radeon 9800XT (412MHz), DVI, TV-out
Price: $412 shipped
As we mentioned in previous guides, ATI continues to hold a firm grasp on the add-in desktop video market. While ATI's lead is quite noticeable at the low end and fairly noticeable with the mid-range sector, their lead at the high end isn't quite as drastic. It's still there, as even AnandTech has concluded that the 9800XT is more or less the fastest desktop gaming GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) currently available. Still, NVIDIA's 5950 Ultra closely trails the 9800XT (more on the 5950 in a moment) enough in current games in terms of speed and IQ (image quality), that it's pretty clear the 9800XT is the superior high end product. That's why we recommend it today, with the manufacturer, PowerColor, yet again. With this card, you get DVI (if you have an LCD), TV-out, and 256MB of memory. The 256MB of memory will come in really handy with future DX9 titles, though not for quite some time. Overall, you're getting an incredible gaming card here.
Finally, as we've reiterated several times in other Buyer's Guides, do not purchase 9800SE video cards. They perform on par or, in most cases, slower than a 9600 Pro in 3D games and cost closer to a 9700 Pro. Do not be fooled; a 9800SE performs nothing like a full blown 8 pipe 256 bit (memory interface) 9800 Pro.
Listed below is part of our RealTime pricing engine, which lists the lowest prices available on ATI video cards from many different reputable vendors:
If you cannot find the lowest prices on the products that we've recommended on this page, it's because we don't list some of them in our RealTime pricing engine. Until we do, we suggest that you do an independent search online at the various vendors' web sites. Just pick and choose where you want to buy your products by looking for a vendor located under the "Vendor" heading.
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pesos - Saturday, April 3, 2004 - link
stickyc - i think you're a little confused. raid is not going to do anything about the "hard drive bottleneck." if anything, raid will slow your system down. yes, it might up your data transfer rate, but that is never the bottleneck. access time is what will kill you, and a RAID 0 setup (which is what I imagine you are recommending) if anything will increase your latency a tad. personally I run a 60 gig WD special edition for OS/apps and a 200 gig WD special edition for storage/games. this way you have two separate drives working for you instead of chaining them together for all operations. unfortunately my drives are parallel so my channels are full with the two drives and two optical drives. SATA would be great in this situation because you could get your drives and optical drives all on their own channels.the saddest part of all this is after a few years working in IT, my frankenstein bug is nearly gone. I find myself thinking "yeah it would be great to build my own box again, but man i can grab a Dell with exactly the same components (except a p4 3.2 ghz and no monitor, already have a 20" lcd) and a full 3 yr warranty for $1700. depressing...
flatustdm - Saturday, April 3, 2004 - link
this is the first time i've read the high-end guide. I was a little suprised to see how cost-concious it was. Do you think you could do a "higher-end" article once and a while?I do the purchasing of computers for my company (we have no IT department) and usually spend around 5k per machine without monitor. Every now and then I'll find a comparison of workstation machines, but it would be real nice if you guys could fit one in your rotation. Even if it was every 3 or 6 months it would be a welcome read.
thanks
Minotaar - Saturday, April 3, 2004 - link
Well, I have to say that this high end buyers guide was better than the last.In particular, it was good that pricing information was included on some of the components,.so people actually knew where they could get those parts.
HOWEVER, there were still a lot of issues:
When you publish a high end buyers guide, you should actually build the system and give us the benchmarks. I think its great that anandtech does so much benchmarking already with current day video cards and the like, so benchmark your high end systems! I want to know if I buy A,B,C,D etc just like you say, that I will get EXACTLY ASDF.GH fps on UT2004.
What about heat sink recommendations? Many people are obsessed with silence and cooling performance on their High end PCs because they live work and play right next to them. Heat and noise is a big issue for an increasing number of people! What about zalman's giant passive cooling case? That might be a nice addition to a high end system! does it work? you're ANANDTECH of all places you should know!
Single vs Dual CPU. the author clearly has never gone duallie, or he would be recommending a duallie box for a high end PC. At work I recently had the opportunity to choose between a celly2.4 and a dual p3-800, and I took the p3 800s. dual is so mucb better, and the masses need to know! Anyone who uses their computer will appreciate the fact that they can play a FPS at full performance while their computer is encoding video. Or un-raring pr0n. or whatever they do.
Finally, cases. Ok, so you choose NOT to review heatsinks, and you still recommended a case? come on. Why wasnt the Lian Li PC-6070 considered? or any of the cases recommended by silentpcreview.com?
Nighteye2 - Saturday, April 3, 2004 - link
What about the thought of 2 120 GB disks in RAID 0? At a cost of $184 it's still cheaper than a 74 GB raptor, and you have 240 GB of storage space, alongside the speed boost of RAID 0, which is mainly noticable in load times (anyone else finding those obligatory waits during games annoying?)Satariel - Saturday, April 3, 2004 - link
The Philips 202p4 monitors are capable of a refreshrate of 104hz in 1600x1200.http://pusa-store.com/_Catalogs/i/202P4.pdf
"Resolutions span all the way up to 2048x1536 with 1600x1200 sustainable at a high refresh rate of 104Hz"
http://www.tweak3d.net/reviews/philips/202P40/202P...
Also the video bandwidth is 360 not 320 as they stated on Tweak3d.
lostintime - Saturday, April 3, 2004 - link
I think Anandtech should add a new category: Dream SystemZirconium - Saturday, April 3, 2004 - link
I would really like to see LCD recommendations in future reviews - chiefly because I am a college student and space is a premium. Plus, even at high refresh rates (85 hz), I can't stare at a CRT monitor for too long, but I have no problems with my laptop.As for the hard drive: I am looking to build a system, and from what I have seen, it seems like a good idea to get a 36gb Raptor just to boot and load apps from, and then a supplementary 120gb or larger drive to store my warez... I mean my legal backups of DVDs and CDs I own. Perhaps you are limited by retail prices of things - after rebate, you can frequently get a good hard drive for much less (dealnews.com periodically has links good hard drives for $60 or something in that ballpark).
Cybercat - Friday, April 2, 2004 - link
Meh, nothing's really changed. I can't wait for NF3-250 boards to start showing up! :D Heck, I can't wait for all the great stuff coming out this year. Why can't I just hop into a DeLorian and skip a few months. :pTrogdorJW - Friday, April 2, 2004 - link
The processor choices are also somewhat questionable. If dropping from a Radeon 9800XT to a 9800 Pro 128 MB card to save $200 is considered acceptable - after all, the 9800XT is only about 10% faster - how can you justify buying a $420+ processor when it's at best 10% faster than a processor that costs $140 less? (In the case of the 3.4C, it's only 6% faster than the 3.2C!) I guess choosing the fastest "mainstream" processor (i.e. not P4EE or Athlon FX/Opteron) makes the system "high end"?Really, I think the main problem is that you haven't clearly defined your "high end" target. Are you shooting for !$2000 high end? If so, then this is about as good as you can get. On the other hand, you list a price of "$1000 to $5000" as the range, which is just way too broad. $1000 is down near the mid-range system configuration, while $5000 would only be achieved by using exotic hardware (i.e. 21" LCD and $400 speakers).
I think $2000 is a good price point for a high-end PC, and I think you should just come right out and state what you're aiming for. "High end without breaking the bank" is just not doing it for me, since you only seem to be following that rule about 50% of the time.
TrogdorJW - Friday, April 2, 2004 - link
I disagree with those disagreeing on the hard drive choice. The point of their "high end" system is to build a really good system for a reasonable price. They say that they want to stay closer to $1000 as opposed to $5000, and if you don't count the monitor, you could build this system for about $1500. Pretty good for a very fast PC!Anyway, talking about the hard drives, you've got 120 GB for $92, or 74 GB for $214. Over twice as much cost of a little more than half the storage. Yes, it's faster, but how often will you notice the speed boost? When loading Windows and other applications, you might shave off a few seconds. That's not a big deal to me.
I suppose 74 GB is enough for general use, but the 37 GB Raptor really isn't an option in my book, unless you get a secondary drive for mass data storage. Games are routinely eating 2+ GB chunks (about 5 GB for Unreal Tournament 2004, I think!), so even 80 GB can go pretty fast. Anyway, I like the thought of using two 74 GB Raptors in a RAID 0 array for the performance, but the $430 price tag just kills it for me.