Weekly Buyer's Guide: Mid-Range System - April 2004

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• GoatHerderEd - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link

  some how I posted twice. interesting. sorry.

• GoatHerderEd - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link

  9- WTF did you just copy and paste a newegg site? You think you could have at least edited so it would not take nearly that room. And we dont need anything past the total like the shipping info and other links.

• GoatHerderEd - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link

  9- WTF did you just copy and paste a newegg site? You think you could have at least edited so it would not take nearly that room. And we dont need anything past the total like the shipping info and other links.

• Fr0zeN2 - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link

  With the recent post of AOpen's nforce2 board with an agp/pci lock that works, I was pretty confident that I'd see the a64 2800+ here somewhere. Sure the half-meg cache hurts, but it can't hurt beyond the 200mhz premium that AMD has put on the upcomin Newcastle (also with half a meg), which you can compensate for by OCing anyway. Sure, the XP 2800+ is half the price, but it's also half the performance =/

• jensend - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link

  7- Motherboards these days are generally good for at most one cpu generation (if they don't get cut off in the middle of the generation because newer processors with the same core require a higher bus speed).
  
  Trying to organize the guides around tasks rather than performance/budget level would be counterproductive for two reasons:
  
  1. Half of those tasks are undemanding enough that few noticeable differences can be seen between most machines of the past 6 years.
  
  2. In the range of machines these guides look at there are very few ways in which task-specific performance deviates from overall system performance enough to make a noticeable difference, and most of them are obvious (eg the importance of graphics cards for gaming tasks).

• wolverinski - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link

  
  Hey DIYs,
  for one thousand shipped to the door. Matching colors (beige), Antec case (two fans and 350W PS), faster performance than a nForce2/Athlon system, great overclocking potential and future HT upgrade. Don't hear much about the 865P dual channel chipset. For the price hard to beat!
  
  
  
  
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• lupis42 - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link

  While I personally am a computer enthusiast, and gamer, I am also a broke student, and so I tend to try and get 18 months worth of gaming performance out of a system, and I rarely have to put out any mony for displays, kb&mouse, speakers, etc. I've so far managed to get a good track record in gaming performance by spending 1800$, once every 2 to 3 years, but my last effort was slightly mistimed, and stuff is starting to kill my current gaming rig. Ergo, I was wondering, can we get a proposed system for gamers looking to maximize their time in the sweet spot, that is, not overkill hardware when they buy it, but that remains sufficient for over a year?
  
  Also, given that I still manage email, browsing, etc with no noticable difficulty from an 800Mhz Athalon, and that the only upgrades it has recieved in its 4 year life are 256MB of RAM, and an old 4 gig HD when it's origional (40 gig) died, I wonder what might be found that could replace this system for comparable performance, but with minimal power requirements, and as little waste heat, noise, and wasted space as possible, cheaply. The need for newer and faster hardware to run MS Word on is rediculous. Why not newer more efficient hardware instead?
  
  I seem to have made this alot longer than I intended to, so ill go ahead and throw in the gist here:
  Firstly, how about giving an estimate of a guide systems usable life, and what it will be usable for across that time?
  
  Secondly, given that the midrange system seems to be underkill for gaming even 6 months from now, and is kinda overkill for desktop work, and not designed around workstation requirements, what is it for? For that matter, the high end machine also seems to be so totally generic that it's not incredibly useful. More specialized guides might be a better handle on this issue, for example, Budget guide, Gamers guide, Overclocking guide, Multimeda guide, or something. Since I suspect that end uses have a higher impact on most Anand readers than pure performance anyway, when they go to build systems.
  
  
  

• aerobook2002 - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link

  I suggest you include comments in your systems’ buyer’s guides regarding the system’s upgrade-ability. I personally am interested to know if the recommended motherboards will operate the next generation of CPU’s. So 2-3 years from now when the P4 EE is ~$200 instead of ~$800(?) will my mother board run it? I.E., the ASUS P4P800 Deluxe runs the P4 Northwood and Prescott but will it run the Extreme Edition or whatever is next? Dito for the AMD products (will the AN7 board run the Athlon 64 CPU?). I realize I may have to upgrade other hardware as well, like the RAM.
  
  Additionally, it would be informative to state what the systems would be best suited for, i.e. surfing & e-mail, office application, moderate gaming, video editing (what I’m interested in), etc. Or maybe you could just orient the system for a specific task i.e. video editing, gaming, office application, e-mail, etc.
  
  I am enjoying the ‘Systems Buyers Guides” very much, keep up the good work.
  

• skiboysteve - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link

  i concur with 5

• Corsairpro - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link

  #4
  
  You obviously don't have budget constraints then. To me low end is free - $400, mid is $400-1000, performance is 1000-1500, and overkill is 1500+
  
  There are infact computer enthusiasts who are poor.