Buyer's Guide: High End System - July 2004
by Wesley Fink on June 30, 2004 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
CPU and Motherboard Recommendations
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 FX53 1MB L2 cache (2.4GHz) - SOCKET 939Motherboard: MSI K8N Neo2 - SOCKET 939
Price: CPU - $829 shipped (retail heatsink and fan). Motherboard - $170 shipped
With Intel's recent introduction of Socket 775 came a new 560 Pentium 4, which runs at 3.6GHz. While the 560 is closer in performance than the previous 3.4GHz P4 or the 3.4EE, the FX53 is still the top-performing CPU. 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, whether in the newest Socket 939 or the older Socket 940.
This month also saw the introduction of FX53 in the new Socket 939. Socket 939 processors are available, but the motherboards are just starting to ship and are still very difficult to find. This should improve over the next couple of weeks. AMD increased the price of both the 940 and 939 versions of FX53 when Socket 939 was introduced, so both the new 939 and older 940 FX53 versions are more expensive than last month's Socket 940 FX53.
We chose Socket 939 for the future, since this appears to be AMD's primary socket moving forward. Socket 939 also has the added feature of being able to use any of a very wide selection of commonly available unbuffered DDR memory, instead of the harder to find and more expensive registered DDR required by Socket 940 motherboards..
If you have a difficult time finding the Socket 939 selections, you will get almost identical performance at almost the same cost with last month's selection of the Asus SK8V motherboard, the socket 940 FX53, and OCZ DDR433 Registered DDR memory. These selections are proven performers and are only very slightly slower than the Socket 939 in any benchmark. Both the Asus SK8V 940 and our new MSI K8N Neo2 feature adjustable multipliers, so the processor frequency can be adjusted up and down for those who want to squeeze a bit more from the processor. Both Socket 940 and Socket 939 are also Dual-Channel memory, so the differences in performance are very small.
We broke our own rule a bit to select the excellent MSI K8N Neo2 as the motherboard for our top system. The K8N Neo2 is expected to start appearing in the retail channel this week and we were very impressed with the performance in our Socket 939 launch review. The MSI K8N Neo2 also has the added flexibility of a working PCI/AGP lock if your high end interests include overclocking, a feature not available on the Asus SK8V.
The MSI provides everything that you would expect in a high end motherboard for the Athlon 64. The chipset is the much-updated nForce3-250 Ultra, which features 1000 HyperTransport speed capabilities. You can populate it with up to 4GB of Dual-Channel DDR memory, and the board also has the advantage of the on-chip nVidia Gigabit LAN, which moves high-speed LAN off the PCI bus. There is also a second Gigabit LAN connection on the K8N Neo2. MSI also supports nVidia's excellent "any-drive" RAID technology, which allows up to 4 IDE drives and 4 SATA drives to be combined in any RAID configuration. Support is also included for up to 8 USB devices and 3 Firewire devices.
The K8N Neo2 is also a Core Cell board with excellent adjustments for overclocking control, but also with simple automatic overclocking for those intimidated by manual adjustments. MSI has done a great job of integrating these "Core Center" functions, so you can have complete manual control of the board as well if that is your preference.
AMD also introduced a 3800+ Socket 939 processor with half the cache at a price of about $80 lower. However, if price is a concern, we would suggest going for the 3500+ at about $500 instead. Just keep in mind that while all AMD Athlon 64 processors can be adjusted to lower multipliers, only the FX CPU is completely unlocked.
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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Burbot - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
I wonder what do authors think about recommending good headphones as an alternate for those who do not want or like speakers? Grado SR125 will fit good enough here, wouldn't it?Neekotin - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
hey guys, is the Nu-tech drive capable of Dual layer writing? the NEC drive with a firmware upgrade would seem to be a better choice. although i can barely find some DL media. i also agree with #11 another combo drive would be nice, but that would just be splitting hairs. overall i agree with the guide. great job wes!Zebo - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
Perfect! I would change nothing. :)deathwalker - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
Certainly a very impressive assembly of parts, although I am surprised at the recommendation of parts that are largely not available. I find the selection of the NU-082 very dissapointing. I bought this burner based on a review/recommendation on AnandTech. I have been nothing short of dissapointed with this product..mostly is poor Media compatibility. Bottom line though this system will be a screamer.Sahrin - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
Great article, just one comment. I'd like to echo the concerns already expressed re: the choice of a 6800U. When nVidia's own website is seeking PRE-orders for the card, I doubt it is feasible to recommend it for a system when the better performing-for-same-price X800XT is available right now (granted in limited quanities-you can make the argument that it hasn't been truly released, but there are gamers who bought X800XT's that have them-the same can't be said for any GF6 based card). Other than that, though...rock on.bigtoe33 - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
Only issue i found for me was the creative sound card.While i know they have awesome features etc i know from being a system builder they also cause a lot of issues usually hogging the pci bus etc.For me there are lots of other awesome cards either based on VIA chipsets or Crystal chipsets that are as good with less hogging issues and usually a little cheaper.The other sound card choice for hone recording was fine infact pretty awesome and a card i will be looking to buy.
Thanks for the awesome article.
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
#1 - You make a very good point, as I wouldn't personally have a system without 2 opticals for copying, and I also use a high-speed CD writer for Digital Audio Extraction. Perhaps one of the better combo DVD-CDRW drives could be the 2nd drive to combine with the top DVD burner. We'll take a look at this in our next High-End Guide.rjm55 - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
#6 - While I don't have problems with the recommends in the article, I do agree a high-end system probably deserves an M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 or a Terratec.Also, who is doing audio reviews at AnandTech? I don't recall seeing any in a long time, though it looks like Wesley knows something about audio.
SDwolverine - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
Just built very similar system - slight differences: Asus A8V Deluxe (with luckily a working PCI/AGP lock - thanks for the couple of emails Wesley!) & Athlon 64 3500+, OCZ 3500EB (had Corsair 3200XL but could not get to work), 74Gb Raptor, currently using a 9800 Pro, but have the X800 XT ordered ($434@Gateway 3 weeks ago, blah...good price though). Some benchmarks with the 9800 Pro are:3DMark01: 22,000
3DMark03: 6,100
Sandra Buffered: ~6250/~6150 (running memory 2.5-3-2-8 @ 448)
Have not maxed out any overclocking yet, but I believe I don't really need to, especially with the X800 XT coming.
Also, got the Samsung 193P (I'm used to LCDs, so any minor ghosting is not an issue), and it's unbelievable how crisp, bright, etc. it is.
I'm pretty psyched about the system, the only thing that bums me out is how fast "high end" becomes "mid-range". But I'm sure I'll be able to max out settings at 1280x1024 with AA/AF turned up for quite some time.
For workstation performance, I often work in Excel files that are 20MB+ with complex stat/modeling calcs - with older systems I get 2-3 second delays when processing sensitivities - none on this system and files pull up as fast as notepad docs. ;-)
danidentity - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
Great article, just wanted to point out a small typo.On the "CPU and Motherboard Alternatives" page:
"The new Intel 925X/915 chipsets and Socket 775 processors were finally launched last week. There are many exciting new features that are available with the new 925X/915 chipsets, but performance is really no faster than the current 975P chipset, especially when combined with a Northwood processor."
That should say, "...but performance is really no faster than the current 875P chipset..." not 975P.