Buyer's Guide: High End System - May 2004
by Wesley Fink on May 26, 2004 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
CPU and Motherboard Recommendations
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 FX53 1MB L2 cache (2.4GHz)Motherboard: Asus SK8V (VIA K8T800)
Price: CPU - $731 shipped (retail heatsink and fan). Motherboard - $171 shipped
This was a difficult choice when the high-end selections were Athlon 64 3400+ (2.2Ghz), Athlon 64 FX51 (2.2GHz), Pentium 4 3.4C, and Pentium 4 3.4EE. However, the introduction of the FX53 brings us the only current Athlon 64 at 2.4GHz, which makes the FX53 the fastest CPU you can buy. Selecting the FX53 was only a concern because the introduction of Socket 939 is just around the corner. Yes, Socket 939 will be here next month, but the FX53 will still be the fastest Athlon 64 that you can buy; there will just be an additional FX53 for Socket 939. As you had read in our AMD roadmaps, there will also be a 3800+ for Socket 939 with 512KB cache instead of the 1MB available on the FX53 chips, so you know that the FX53 is blazing fast and faster than a 3800+ will be. In addition to the fast 32-bit performance that we found in our review of the FX53, the FX53 also supports 64-bit computing for the future. Prices have also dropped a bit so that the FX53 is about $300 more than a slower 2.2GHz 3400+. While that's a big price difference for a CPU, it is really fairly small in building a high-end system. The FX53 is also now 30% cheaper than Intel's top 3.4EE, which costs over $1000. Furthermore, all current Pentium 4 processors can only run 32-bit code, so AMD's Athlon 64 is unique because it can run 32-bit code as well or better than the top competition in addition to 64-bit code for the future. All-in-all, the FX53 represents a good choice if you are building a high end system today. If not, wait a few weeks and consider this same FX53 in Socket 939 clothes.
For the Socket 940 FX53, there is no better choice than the Asus SK8V. In our roundup of Socket 940 motherboards, the SK8V out-paced the competition in almost every benchmark and earned our Gold Editor's Choice as the best Socket 940 motherboard.
The Asus SK8V earned Editor's Choice because it is simply the fastest AMD motherboard that we have ever tested. Wherever the SK8V is benchmarked, it has earned an Editor's Choice for the kind of legendary performance that makes it the ideal heart for a High End system. Don't confuse the Asus SK8V with the SK8N, which is built on the nVidia nForce3-150 chipset. The VIA K8T800 performs much better than the nF3-150 on the more demanding Socket 940 Dual-Channel platform.
The Asus SK8V is fully decked-out as you would expect from the Asus flagship board for Athlon 64. Features include dual RAID capabilities with both VIA SATA RAID supported by the VIA 8237 and Promise 20378 IDE/SATA RAID. You will also find on-board 6-channel SoundMax audio from ADI AD1985 that includes SPDIF connections, 8 USB 2.0 ports, 2 Firewire 1394a ports, and an Asus WiFi slot for wireless capabilities. An added bonus is that the Athlon 64 FX processors are completely unlocked and the SK8V supports this well with CPU ratios from 800 to 4000 in 100MHz increments. Whatever your FX-53 can do on overclocking is supported on the SK8V. Asus has lavished every top-end feature in their huge arsenal on the SK8V and it definitely wears the features very well. As a personal testimony, the SK8V is a favorite motherboard with Anand and Derek in our Raleigh, NC labs and with me in our New York labs. The best recommendation we could possibly make is that the Asus SK8V is the heart of two of these personal systems.
For those not comfortable with the ECC Registered memory requirements of the Socket 940 for Athlon 64 FX and Opteron, the recommendation is the MSI K8N Neo Platinum or one of several other excellent boards based on the new nVidia nForce3-250 chipset. While VIA may own the performance crown for Socket 940, nF3-250 owns the crown for enthusiast features on the Single-Channel Socket 754. All of the nF3-250 boards that we have tested have working PCI/AGP locks to get the most from any CPU and memory that you choose to use. More information on the MSI can be found in the K8N Neo review. For the Socket 754 Alternate, the Athlon 64 3400+ gets our nod.
Listed below is part of our RealTime pricing engine, which lists the lowest prices available on the AMD CPUs and motherboards 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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Pumpkinierre - Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - link
At first, I was shocked at your choice of FX53 as a cpu because this is the last of the Sckt940 FX and upgradeability to later FXs would not be possible. Upgrade ability is not one of your criteria but it certainly is mine as I expect an expensive mobo to span two generations of cpus, video cards and even memory. But really Skt940 is more trustworthy (and possibly cheaper) than even 939 as other posts point out because it is the server cpu-opteron. So the mobo might handle the dual core opterons next year. After this revelation I thought the FX51 might cut a few dollars but your price list has it $20 MORE than its bigger brother! AMD go figure?!The FX is still a rip-off and the new Skt 939 3800+ looks like its got a lot of grunt, according to the french article below, but runs hot (104Watts, 50-60C) and this is 130nm- Prescott anyone?:
http://www.x86-secret.com/popups/articleswindow.ph...
They only found 0-5% increase with dual channel for same speed cpu and it had problems with four dimms- dropped to 2T timing or to DDR333 with DS modules. And the price may be expensive with AMDs habit of selective release from the high end like previous a64s:
http://www.overclockers.com/tips00588/
With the Skt478 P4 you're limited as an upgrade to P4EEs coming down in price unless 3.6 N'wood or Prescott skt478 appears (which is hardly worth while anyway)- neither of which is likely.
So the Sckt940 is not a bad option. If only those FXs would drop into the $500 range.
SHO235V8 - Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - link
I agree that there seems to be a huge spread, but I also assume it will be adjusted in the next mid level guide. I too have been waiting for the 939 boards, but I may not wait much longer considering VagrantZero's points regarding new M/B technologies and DDR2 which will be commonplace by the time I upgrade in a year or two. Besides, there are sometimes issues with the first release version of new technologies. Anyone else know of a better reason to hold off for the new boards? Will dual channel memory be that much faster?Dismal - Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - link
I was a little scared at first that the non-FX Athlon 64's would be completely forgotten about when opening the guide. But I was glad to see some mentioning in there. Hopefully they will still stay in the guides. I want good performance but I just can't spend the kind of cash to buy an FX. Recommendations in the mid-range guide don't seem to fit the kind of performance I'm looking for either. (I agree with rdclark's post above about the gap between mid-range and high-end). I don't think I'm savvy enough to go with overclocking. The price of the Athlon 64 3400+ seemed to be a good match for me. Hopefully they'll still remain in the guides.JKing76 - Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - link
Aluminum cases don't dissipate heat any faster than steel.Locutus4657 - Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - link
Well I have to say, you did finally remove one of my biggest bet peives with these guides. I never could understand why Evan kept recommending 120GB drives for a high end system, Personally I'm considering getting 160GB for my system, and right now I just have an entry level computer ( AXP 2200+ ). One can never have enough hard drive space!GokieKS - Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - link
Great choices, and it's nice to finally have a truly good case being recommend. But since there's still such a big part of the $5K budget remaining, why not something even more high-end, like the SilverStone SST-TJ03 Nimiz? ;)The 193P is an excellent monitor, no doubt, but as one of the 19" LCDs limited by a 1280x1024 resolution, the extra $150 or $200 of the Viewsonic VP201 is definitely worth it. And if you have two of them... ^^
Other than that, just about everything seems fine, even if I personally would go for the A64 3200/3400 instead of the FX53, and pair it up with a nForce3 250Gb mobo.
~KS
Da3dalus - Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - link
Seems like good choices. The only thing I'd choose differently would be the case and the alternative 200GB HD, I'd choose the S-ATA version of that instead of the IDE version. The price difference is really tiny and S-ATA is just plain nicer (I hate those big IDE cables).rdclark - Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - link
I'd like to see some performance benchmarking of these systems, especially as this high-end guide's system costs a cool thousand more than the previous high-end guide's. How much of a difference is there, or are you just buying expensive bragging rights?The new guide also leaves a fairly large gap between the mid-range and the high-end system; the mid-range is still suggesting an XP2800+, while this jumps right to the highest of the high-end. That removes a valuable basis for comparision (and decision-making) in the Athlon 64 3xxx space, which (IMO) seriously lowers the value of these guides.
cosmotic - Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - link
Why not reccomend the DDW-082 instead of the DDW-081?VagrantZero - Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - link
I wouldn't rec you getting 2gb of ram. There's nothing [aka games] out there that uses it, not even D3 or HL2. I doubt 2gigs will really become a good thing until U3 [2006] and by then DDR2 should be coming into its own making your DDR obsolete. I'd say save $300 and get a 3400+/3700+. From x86's article [foreign website, here's the translated url http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F...] the 754 3400+ was outperforming the 939 3500+ in the majority of benchs. I'll wait and see how the 3700 handles the 3800, but if it wins I'm sticking with the old socket [I'd have to upgrade my mobo eventually anyways thanks to PCI-E, SATA300, and DDR2 so 939 isn't anymore future proof for me than 754]. Plus there was talk of 104W power requirments [THAT'S MORE THAN THE PRESCOTT!] and that the new socket chips ran almost as hot as intel offerings. It's just one article so take it with a grain of salt, but I have my suspicions.Also, if you don't plan to OC Corsair XMSPC3500s would be a great pick.