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Gaming Buyer's Guide - November 2004

 by Jarred Walton on November 21, 2004 5:54 PM EST
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70 Comments

AMD Budget Gaming System, Part Two

We cut several corners in order to reduce the price as far as possible on the first AMD system, but if you can afford a few upgrades, we would suggest the following instead.

Budget AMD Athlon 64 939 System
Hardware Recommended Component Price
Processor AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 1.8 GHz (939) 90 nm 170
Motherboard Abit AV8 (939) 103
Memory 1x512MB Mushkin Basic 2.5-4-4 75
Video Card XFX GeForce 6600GT AGP 128 MB 229
Hard Drive Seagate Barracuda 80GB EIDE model 7200.7 59
Optical Drive NEC DVD+/-RW Drive Model 3500A 72
Case and Power Supply Athenatech A602 Black/Silver with 350W PSU 62
Display Samsung 793DF 17 Black/Silver CRT (1280x1024@75 Hz) 139
Speakers Logitech Z-640 5.1 52
Keyboard and Mouse Logitech Optical Desktop Combo 26
Bottom Line   987



Click to enlarge.
Abit's K8T800 Pro based AV8 motherboard has dropped about $20 in price since its release, and it still offers great features and performance. Coming with support for the socket 939 platform, it should have more longevity and will also provide more performance than comparable socket 754 systems. This is especially true in games, where the dual-channel RAM and other performance tweaks can add 5% to 15% to the overall speed. For the RAM, we recommend starting with one 512 MB DIMM and upgrading to a second DIMM and dual-channel when you can afford the extra $75. You could also just add in the RAM right now and push the price over $1000.

The recommended CPU is AMD's cheapest socket 939 chip, the 1.8 GHz 3000+. This chip uses the new 90 nm process and can overclock very well, but more importantly, it has dropped in price about $50 since it first launched. It seems that since the chips were in such high demand, many resellers bumped the price up quite a bit for the first few weeks. Our tests have shown the 90 nm parts to actually be slightly faster than the older 130 nm parts, although the precise details of what changes were made remain largely unknown. What's more impressive is that even the 2.2 GHz 3500+ 90 nm part requires less power and generates less heat than even the slowest 130 nm Athlon 64. If you want to try your hand at overclocking, these chips have shown a lot of potential, with some people reporting overclocks of up to 2.8 GHz. At that speed, performance is very close to that of the FX-55 chip that costs over four times as much. Talk about bang for the buck! You would certainly want better RAM for such an endeavor, though. For the extra $75, then, the socket 939 platform offers quite a few desirable upgrades.


Click to enlarge.
We also changed the graphics card for the 939 platform. Yes, you can use the more expensive card on the less expensive system, but we were really looking to cut costs as much as possible while still maintaining a decent level of performance. For $30 more, the GeForce 6600GT is now available, and performance ranges from being slightly faster than the 9800 Pro to being significantly faster. Doom 3, in particular, shows a huge advantage with the 6600GT. You might also wonder about the GeForce 6800 cards. While they have 12 pipelines, they are also clocked slower, so it ends up basically being a tie in many situations when compared to the 6600GT. At higher resolutions, however, the increased memory bandwidth of the 6800 almost always wins out - a 256-bit interface running at 700 MHz is still about 40% faster than a 128-bit interface running at 1000 MHz.

If you want to try your hand at overclocking, we would also go with the 6800. There have been many reports of success with using a utility like Riva Tuner to re-enable the last four pixel pipelines, and combined with an overclock to 400 MHz, it will definitely outperform the best that the 6600GT can put up. While the list price of the 6800 is $300, there are a few locations that have them for $250 (plus shipping and possibly tax). That's only $20 more than the current price of the 6600GT, so it's definitely worth considering. Once the price of the 6600GT drops - as we assume it will over the next month or two, judging by the price of the 6600GT PCIe parts - the 6800 becomes less attractive.

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  • benk - Monday, November 22, 2004 - link

    The Dell 2001FP is listed at 799 and is often on sale for well below 700.

  • Swaid - Monday, November 22, 2004 - link

    Illissius -
    I was just about to suggest that. The Epox motherboard is a much better "buy" then the Chaintech now.

  • Illissius - Monday, November 22, 2004 - link

    I agree with nearly all the choices, which can't be said for most other buying guides I've read :)
    My one suggestion is that the EPoX 8KDA3J costs nearly the same as the Chaintech VNF3-250, and has more functionality -- namely, it uses the 250Gb chipset.

  • kherman - Monday, November 22, 2004 - link

    AGP:

    Anyone wondering aobut when it will be phased out, just look back to old PCI video cards. Took about 1-2 years for manufacturers to drop AGP support altogether. It's a supply demand issue.

    As for mobo's I'd expect to see new mobo's w/AGP for atleast a year more. Some people iwll be using those older video cards after all. Also, multiple PCI-X slots are the goal and if I understand correctly, PCI altogether will be dropped, menaing network and sound cards will also need a PCI-X home.

    Anyways...my 2 cents.

  • kherman - Monday, November 22, 2004 - link

    How about RAID 5 for the "fully employed" system? Would be redundant and should give slightly faster load times ;)

  • kherman - Monday, November 22, 2004 - link

    "Budget Gaming System, Part Two"

    IMHO: Keep the 2800+ part and spend that extra $50 on a better video card. That will give better frame rates, IMO of course.

  • JarredWalton - Monday, November 22, 2004 - link

    I've heard conflicting reports about the quality of gaming on the Dell 2001FP. Some people love it, and others think it's good but perhaps not great. The price on it is also subject to quite a bit of variation. Right now, I believe it's on sale for about the same as the Viewsonic, while "normally" it might be $1000 plus shipping. I have not actually used one in person, so I can't really comment on interpolation quality, but of the LCDs that I have used, I have yet to see one that offers interpolation of such a quality that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. Opinions on that, of course, differ.

    The same goes for the wireless mouse. Some people swear by the MX510. I've tried it, and I simply did not like it. The Microsoft wireless mice I've tried were even worse, however. Anyway, the choice of mouse is very personal. I really like the standard MS Optical five button. It's light and accurate enough that I don't have any complaints. Even with an unlimited budget, I would still buy that same mouse for my own use. I *could* go out and try numerous other mice, but I'm just not that concerned with that one peripheral. If you are, more power to you! :)

  • MiLLeRBoY - Monday, November 22, 2004 - link

    Also, for the High-End Gaming, check out the new the Logitech Z-5500 Digital speakers. It's just a revamped version of the Z-680's design as well as adding more power. The subwoofer is noticeably larger than the former though. The retail price is $400.

  • MiLLeRBoY - Monday, November 22, 2004 - link

    DEMO24 - I have the 20.1" Dell 2001FP and it only has a 16ms response time. However, I don't see ghosting when playing games. I also play my games at 1024x768 with 4xAA when the LCD's native resolution is 1600x1200. The image interpolation is great, it doesn't look horrible even at 1280x1024 or 1024x768. And the price is around the same as the ViewSonic VP912B. However, I probably wouldn't mind using any of those two LCDs, they're both great.

  • xsilver - Monday, November 22, 2004 - link

    ?? min 18A on 12v rail -- crap my PSU doesn't have that... will it not run a AMDs939? (15A -- enhance brand, respectable, heavy)
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