Buyer's Guide: High End System - May 2004
by Wesley Fink on May 26, 2004 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Video
Recommendation: 256MB Radeon X800 ProPrice: $425 shipped
While the dust hasn't settled in this round of the video wars, we do know that the new generation of video cards from nVidia and ATI are twice as fast as the previous generation in many benchmarks. Knowing that, you simply can't ignore the new cards when building a high-end system. The only one of the new cards that we could actually find for sale right now is the ATI Radeon X800 Pro. The X800 Pro will eventually settle into the price range around $400, which is a good deal, cheaper than the $500 that you will pay for the X800 XT or nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra when they are finally available in the marketplace. Consider this round a victory for ATI for availability, but the war (or the best choice) is far from settled.
You will never have to apologize to anyone for choosing the X800 Pro for your new high end system, since it is an excellent performer that can hold its own - especially considering it is one slot, one molex connector, and can be used with most any quality power supply. For more information on the relative performance of the new generation of video cards, check out the AnandTech review of the X800.
Alternative: 128MB Saphire Radeon 9800 PRO 256-bit, DVI, TV-out
Price: $192 shipped
There really isn't very much difference in the performance of the 128MB 9800 PRO and 256MB 9800 XT, so we certainly would not recommend spending the $370 it would cost for a 9800 XT, when you can buy a Radeon 9800 PRO 256-bit (not the more limited 128-bit LE) for $192. What a bargain, if price matters somewhat on your high-end system. On the other hand, the X800 Pro is so much better than the 9800 XT that we would recommend spending the extra $50 if you had thought of the 9800 XT, and get a X800 Pro instead.
With the introduction of the new generation of video cards, there are clearly some real bargains available at what was the old high-end. You can also find an nVidia GeForce 5900XT for about the same price as the 9800 PRO, but the 9800 PRO is generally regarded as the better performer in a comparison of these two cards. Like the 9800 XT, the comparable 5950 Ultra is selling in the $370 range, another case where the difference in performance hardly justifies double the price.
We recommend that you stay away from the 9800SE video cards. With the 9800 PRO so reasonable these days, there is absolutely no reason to settle for a 9800SE that, at best, performs on par with or often even slower than a 9600 Pro in 3D games. Don't 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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MadAd - Monday, May 31, 2004 - link
I just wish you guys would do a 'dream' system, money NO object - us geeks like to dream, even if we cant afford fibre raided flash drives and $2000 sound setups ..... it only has to be like once every 3 months or so, just for drooling rights - awww go on :)Ma10n3 - Monday, May 31, 2004 - link
This comment thread seems to be pretty dead now, but I thought I'd just tack this on...Maybe there should be a high-end gaming system and a high-end everything-but-gaming system.
A lot of newer game engines are SMP capable though, so the two may become one in the near future.
qquizz - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
GLARING ERROR ALLOWED TO STAND:As noted days ago in this forum, I can't believe Anandtech has allowed this error not to be changed yet in this sentence in the storage section of the article:
"Those concerned about data security more than ultimate speed can configure the drives as RAID 0, or mirroring."
Ma10n3 - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
I wish I could just edit one of the posts above... Anyway, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense that the Iwill doesn't support DDR400 though because the memory controller is on the processor die. ???But, if the manufacturer doesn't claim it supports it, than it seems reasonable to go with a manufacturer that does. After all, when you're spending this much money on a system, compatibility becomes very important!
Ma10n3 - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
Uh, scratch the Iwill board. It only supports up to DDR333!Looks like the TYAN Thunder K8W is about the only choice.
Ma10n3 - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
Roostercrows, another motherboard that supports all the features listed above is the Iwill DK8X.Can't seem to find any others...
Ma10n3 - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
#52, If you are considering a dual-opteron setup, than I should also let you know that the only mobo I could find that uses the NUMA (microsoft.com has quite a bit of info on NUMA) configuration and has AGP8X, PCI-X, and legacy PCI is the TYAN Thunder K8W. If anyone knows of any others that have all these features, please post the info.roostercrows - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
#50, Yes, I did read all the posts including #39and I didn't mean to imply that you used the term best "bang for the buck". sorry if I gave that impression.
I'm building a new computer and have the dual raptor hard drives and one maxtor 200 GB, power supply from PC power & cooling, video card X800, monitor (not my white wall #51 but that was funny), case is a coolermaster stacker, I'm trying to decide which processor and mobo to use and this was the first I had heard of possibly using a dual opteron and it sounds interesting as cadcam use is part of my goal but I need to learn a lot more. Thanks for your opinion since the WinXP64 is what I'm building the system for.
Neekotin - Friday, May 28, 2004 - link
yo guys, it just hit me. this is a high-end sys... why not get a white wall and good projector, imagine your monitor as the entire wall. ;)Ma10n3 - Friday, May 28, 2004 - link
#49, Did you take a look at the article listed in post #39?Oh, and I at least never claimed a dual-processor system gives you more "bang for the buck." I do believe it gives you quite a bit more mileage out of the hardware you purchase considering the direction Windows is heading (referring to Windows XP 64-bit edition, of course). Also, the benefit of doubling the memory bandwidth as well once WinXP64 is released (because of NUMA support) should increase performance in all applications, 32 or 64 bit. The legacy PCI bus is a severe bottleneck to all connected peripherals largely due to the fact that they all have to share the same bandwidth. Most of the newer dual-processor boards offer alternatives to just a single legacy PCI bus because of the chipsets they use and features of the AMD Opteron cpus.
Considering all of the above, I don't believe an Intel dual-processor system contains enough worthwhile features to justify the purchase.
Again, as far as the hard numbers, please refer to the URL listed in post #39.