High End Buyer's Guide - September 2004
by Wesley Fink on August 30, 2004 12:22 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
PCI Express Video
PCIe Recommendation: ATI X800 XT Platinum 256MBPrice: $545 Shipped
If you are an overclocker looking for top performance on a new Intel 925X board, the X800 XT is the best PCI Express option, particularly if you plan to overclock the system. In all of our reviews of the Intel 925X boards, overclocking requires running the PCIe out of spec, and our tests of the current ATI video cards show that they tolerate out-of-spec PCIe speeds much better than comparable nVidia video cards. This makes the X800 XT Platinum a very good match to our 925X alternative High-End system.
The X800 XT is still hard to find, but it appears that availability is improving and will continue to become less of a problem over time. As we have pointed out in the past, you can choose either the X800 XT or the 6800 Ultra and be perfectly happy and perfectly competitive in the performance area. Therefore, if you don't plan to overclock, then either top-end card will fit your needs very well. However, for overclocking PCI Express, the ATI cards simply survive to higher PCIe overclock levels. If Doom 3 is your game, that might also sway you the other way to the 6800 Ultra, which does perform better in Doom 3 than ATI's top card.
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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Avalon - Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - link
#30, the AMD system should be somewhat faster in gaming for you. As for 3D studio max, I'm not sure which.stevennoland - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
The vid card price list does not include the X800 XT! What gives? I've tried to find them, but I'm really beginning to belive they don't exist.stevennoland - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
jjkusaf - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
oh...and would an Intel system be better for gaming and 3D Studio Max?jjkusaf - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
OK...first of all thanks for taking your time in writing this guide.I am in the market of building a new computer and will pretty much use this guide to help make my decisions. My computer will primarily be used for gaming (Doom3, N2003, etc) and 3D Studio Max.
My first question is about the CPU cooler. I take it that the stock cooler was used (I do not intend on overclocking)? I do not intend on buying the FX...but just the plain ol' AMD 64 3800. If the stock cooler is not recommended...then what cooler is?
Also...any advantages of the N-Force3 over the Via chipset...and vice versa.
Thanks for the write up!
Wesley Fink - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
#25 - As was stated on the last page (Final Words) of the Geil Ultra X 3200 review, the Geil tops out around 466 on AMD Athlon 64. That is why we selected a Micron chip memory for the A64 in the Guide.#26 - typo fixed.
gherald - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
The mid-range system from last month came to just over $1000. Now you are recommending a $3600 system as "high-end"C'mon Anand, that's too big of a price step. Three and a half "mid-range" systems for the price of one "high-end" ?!?
There should be a guide at around the $2000-2300 mark for this to be balanced.
danidentity - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
Another small typo,Page 6, Storage:
"Anand has shown that there is little performance advantage to SATA 1, but striping is still useful for improving boot times."
I believe that is supposed to say "little performance advantage to RAID 0", as the link points to a RAID 0 article.
Andrevas - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
I'm surprised the OCZ Powerstream 520W wasn't chosen for both systems, IMO it is the best power supply, period.And I'd like to know how well the new Geil Ultra X DDR400 sticks fair with the AMD 64 platforms in OCing since they were able to hit DDR561 in your review on an Intel platform.
Plus no mentioning of the Logitech Z680s?
Other then those issues, I think the components chosen were great except for the case, but that's more of a matter of personal interest.
Wesley Fink - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
#14 and #21 - That sentence was a cut and paste error and has been corrected on the AGP video page. The timeline for 925X/775 has also been updated by removing the time reference.