High End Buyer's Guide - September 2004
by Wesley Fink on August 30, 2004 12:22 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
CPU and Motherboard Recommendations
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 FX53 1MB L2 cache (2.4GHz) - SOCKET 939Motherboard: MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum - SOCKET 939
Price: CPU - $829 shipped (retail heatsink and fan). Motherboard - $145 shipped
For those looking for the best performance possible, it would be tough to recommend anything other than the Athlon 64 FX53. The Athlon 64 is currently the fastest processor that you can buy, the Dual-Channel Socket 939 is the top-performing A64 Socket, and the FX is the fastest 939 processor. The FX also has the distinction of being the only processor that is completely unlocked. That means that you can adjust multipliers both up and down, to obtain the highest possible speed at the fastest DDR400 memory timings, or to obtain the highest FSB that your high speed memory can run or your CPU can reach
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. In addition, 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, whether in the newest Socket 939 or the older Socket 940.
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. You will get almost identical performance at almost the same cost with 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.
While they are just beginning to appear in the retail channel (finally!), the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum stood out in our recent Socket 939 roundup as a top performer and earned the AnandTech Gold Editor's Choice. Perhaps even more important for performance, the K8N Neo2 was the only board in the 939 roundup to match and actually edge ahead of the standout memory performance of the legendary Asus P4C800-E in our overclock tests. The K8N Neo2 actually reached a Clock Frequency of 290 (DDR580) with fast DDR550 memory that we used in our overclock tests. Wherever you can take the FX53, the K8N Neo2 will go - to the limits of your CPU or memory.
When the day is done, the K8N Neo2 will continue to impress with a full implementation of the features of the nForce3-250Gb/Ultra including fast on-chip LAN, any-drive RAID that allows IDE and SATA hard drives to be combined in RAID arrays, and an on-chip Firewall. The feature set compares well to any premium Socket 939 on the market and will not disappoint. You can count on a working AGP/PCI lock with adjustments from 66 to 100, CPU multipliers from 4X to 20X, HyperTransport adjustments from 1GHz to 200MHz (5x-1x), and CPU frequencies from 200 - 300. You also get a full range of voltage adjustments - vCore to 1.85V, memory voltage to 2.85V, and vAGP to 1.85V. This is even a board for the beginning overclocker, since there are automatic overclocking selections in Core Cell that set everything for you. You just choose the % overclock from 1% to 11% and the board does the rest.
The MSI provides everything that you would expect in a high-end motherboard for the Athlon 64. Memory up to 4GB is supported in Dual-Channel mode. Support is also included for up to 8 USB devices and 3 Firewire devices. There is also a second Gigabit LAN port for added flexibility. On-Board audio is provided by the latest Realtek 7.1 ALC850 with SPDIF I/O.
We have never tested a perfect board, and as much as we like the K8N Neo2, there are still areas for improvement. MSI has answered one suggestion by providing an improved CPU frequency range to 350 in the latest 1.1 BIOS. Another improvement MSI could make is to provide finer adjustments for CPU ratios, providing 0.5X ratios like some of the competing boards. Last, there is no real voltage adjustment for HT or chipset voltage, and that would add to the flexibility. However, in the end, it's hard to complain about a board that does so much so well. The MSI is a great board to house the FX53 for the High-End system.
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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Wesley Fink - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
#17 -Thanks for the info on Apple's updated interface. While I agree the picture on the Dell is a bit gainy with smearing on analog, I have found the 2001FP to be outstanding on DVI. With this size flat panel I assumed no one would run anything but digital input.
Hikari - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
On the Apple displays and ADC. That is no longer true, they use DVI now.There is some new 23" HP that is based on the same panel as the Apple, and I think it is a better deal. Although the Apple is prettier. ;)
danidentity - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
Few mistakes I'd like to point out:Page 3, CPU and Motherboard Alternatives:
"When Socket 775 was launched a few weeks ago, it did not appear that any of the new 925X/915 motherboards would ever become a recommended Overclockers board."
***Socket 775 was launched two months ago, not several weeks ago. Looks like a copy/paste mistake.
Page 6, AGP Video:
"We ended up relaxing our rules by including the Gigabyte 6800 Ultra because several vendors are showing availability in the first 2 weeks of July."
***July??? This is August, almost September.
JonathanYoung - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
kherman,Who's complaining about advertisements? That realtime pricing engine is hardly an advertisement... it's a long list of prices and vendors in plain text and zero differentiation between vendors. Again, that's hardly an advertisement.
I'd read AT's disclaimer on the subject if I were you, particularly the following lines:
"We select vendors to appear in our Price Guides based on two requirements: solid consumer feedback and having the lowest possible pricing."
"AnandTech does not sell positions on the Price Guide."
Note the "We select" and "AnandTech does not sell positions."
Sincerely,
"#5"
Aelius - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
Actually I own a brand new Apple 20" Aluminum Cinema Display. Dispite the site telling you that it can take a month to ship one to you I got mine in 4 days.The stand is increadibly solid. No way to simply knock it over. It's gota be solid metal and most of the weight of the monitor comes from the stand.
It's very light at around 7 1/2 lbs.
It's not dinky at all. You can adjust the way the monitor points up and down and it stays the way you leave it. That part is also very solid.
There are no vents anywhere because the power brick is not built-in and the entire casing is made out of aluminum which absorbs the heat so the top gets fairly warm to the touch after long use.
The whole thing is increadibly high quality.
A cool feature of the monitor is that you can adjust the backlight through a + and - touch pad on the right side and the power button is also a touch pad found on the right.
Far as I know the Apple's come with very few dead or stuck pixles but mine came with 3 dead and 2 stuck blue pixles. Honestly I can't even notice even when I look for it unless it's a black background.
It's so sharp and bright that it makes my old Viewsonic PF CRT look like an ancient wreck.
Is it expansive? Oh God yeah and it's worth every penny as far as I'm concerned.
P.S. There seems to be a quality control issue with 23" displays but mine seems fine and couldn't find any issues with it that others reported on the 23" ones.
Any questions just PM me as I won't monitor this page.
ksherman - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
#17- agreed, and according to apple, have a response time of 16ms, so maybe it is worth doing a review of, even though it is several hundred dollars more... and is it just me, or does the stand on the apple display seem like it not be able to support the screen?shuttleboi - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
#9: your information is outdated. Apple introduced new monitors a few months ago that have DVI. Check their website. Their new 20" LCD is selling for $1299, which is in line with the equivalent Samsung and Planar models. From what I've read, the Dell 2001fp is extremely grainy with a crosshatch pattern on the screen, so I'm avoiding that.behemoth68 - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
I Just put a BFG 6800 ultra into my system and am currently using an antec true power 480 and you seriously need the antec true power 550 especially since its only 20 more online its the smart move my system voltage was fluctuating a little at 480 but i put the 550 in and it worked great!phray - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
about the price engine thingy:i agree with kherman on this. if you want this site to stay free, get used to it.
if you don't like scrolling down all that much, try pressing the 'End' key on your keyboard.
SMOG - Monday, August 30, 2004 - link
Great article, I continually am impressed by the quality of the articles here, and find the buyer's guides particularly helpful.I did find one strange comment in the artical,
"We ended up relaxing our rules by including the Gigabyte 6800 Ultra because several vendors are showing availability in the first 2 weeks of July." Are these cards still hard to find? (quick search told me that both Newegg and ZipZoomFly had some in stock, but were sold out on many brands)
Thanks,
SMOG