Intel Budget
While Intel offerings have tended to be more expensive than configurations from AMD, our Intel budget and AMD budget PCs are all but the same price. With prices all but the same you can choose your budget system based on other features that are important to you.
| Intel Budget PC | ||
| Hardware | Component | Price |
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 Wolfdale (2.93GHzx2 3MB Cache 1066 FSB) |
$145 |
| Cooling | CPU Retail HSF | $- |
| Video | On-Board | $- |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H nVidia GeForce 9400 | $120 |
| Memory | OCZ Fatal1ty Edition 4GB DDR2-1066 OCZ2F10664GK ($28 after rebate) | $43 |
| Hard Drive | WD Caviar GP WD5000AACS 500GB | $59 |
| Optical Drive | Samsung 22X DVDRW/DL SH-S202G | $25 |
| Audio | On-Board | $- |
| Case | Cooler Master Elite 330 RC-330-KKN1-GP Mid Tower | $40 |
| Power Supply | BFG Tech LS Series LS-550 550W SLI Certified, CrossFire Ready, 80 PLUS Certified ($20 Rebate) | $60 |
| Base System Total | $492 | |
| Display | ViewSonic VX2233wm Black 21.5" 5ms Widescreen 16:9 LCD (1920x1080) | $170 |
| Speakers | Logitech R-20 12 Watts RMS 2.1 Multimedia Speaker | $18 |
| Input | Microsoft CA9-00001 Black PS/2 Standard Keyboard and Optical USB/PS2 Mouse - OEM | $16 |
| Operating System | Microsoft Vista Home Premium OEM | $99 |
| Complete System Bottom Line | $795 | |
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The E7500 ups the bus to 1066 from the 800FSB of our entry-level Intel system. A dual-core 2.93GHz with 3MB of cache won't be a slouch in any department in your budget system. Yes the new i7 is faster, but it is also much more expensive. The question for a budget system is how good the performance is for the money spent. The E7500 SYSmark 2007 score is about 72% of the very top Core i7 965 Extreme. That is fantastic performance for a CPU that costs just $145. The E7500 is also a candidate for overclocking if you are inclined to move the performance a bit closer toward the 3.33GHz Core 2 Duo E8600, which reaches 88% of the i7 965 SYSmark performance.
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The Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H is one of the most reasonable nVidia 9300/9400 chipset boards and features the GF9400 chipset at a price that matches most of the GF9300 equipped boards. With the 9400 integrated graphics performance is good enough to play most games at 1280x1024 on medium quality settings. This is leaps and bounds ahead of Intel's G45 series in this department. However, the HTPC feature set impresses us most. The only thing we are lacking is the ability to bitstream Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA (both of which no chipset currently supports). This chipset offers flawless HDMI/HDCP repeater compatibility, fully functional hardware acceleration, 8-channel LPCM output, and of course, stutter-free 24p playback.
Gigabyte loaded the GA-E7AUM-DS2H with four DDR2 DIMM slots featuring 16GB memory support, Realtek ALC889A HD audio with Dolby Home Theater, Realtek 8211CL Gigabit LAN, and five SATA 3Gb/s ports with RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 capabilities. Also included is eSATA 3Gb/s support, two IEEE 1394a ports, 12 USB 2.0 ports, one PCIe x16 slot, one PCIe x1 slot, two PCI slots, IDE connector, and video output including D-Sub, DVI-D, and HDMI ports. The BIOS is user friendly and features numerous overclock options for those wanting to get more out the E7500 processor along with decent temperature and fan speed monitoring options.
By this time, you may be wondering why we chose not to include an aftermarket CPU heatsink to go along with our CPU choices. For this budget, a $50 solution from Thermalright or Scythe was simply not an option, but with the stock AMD and Intel heatsinks incorporating heatpipe technology, we figured we'd still be good for a decent if not spectacular overclock.
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The rest of the components are the same as those found in the AMD budget system. Again, for gaming purposes you can look to an upgraded GPU like the Radeon HD 4850 or 4870. Sound cards at this budget are simply an unnecessary luxury, and the onboard offerings continue to improve with each new motherboard generation. You can be reasonably happy with the onboard sound until you figure out if you want to go further with sound.
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JarredWalton - Monday, March 16, 2009 - link
We mentioned the benefits of tri-core for video encoding. Also remember that the latest AMD CPUs are 45nm, while the older non-Phenom chips are dual-core 65nm. I think the tri-core chip may actually be the lower power option at this point - it's certainly not going to be significantly hotter while it will be more powerful. Personally, I'd go for Phenom just to get the updated architecture and other improvements, as the dual-core chips are now based on a design that was state-of-the-art several years back. Until AMD moves the Phenom/K10 base design into dual-core, that will continue to be an advantage of the tri-core and quad-core chips.StormyParis - Monday, March 16, 2009 - link
As you say, it seems AMD has pretty much achieved parity processor-wise, at any given price point except the highest where AMD just really has no product.The MBs for AMD processors are always significantly cheaper than the equivalent for Intel CPUs, which tilts the balance. Why is that ?
Goty - Monday, March 16, 2009 - link
I'm assuming it comes down to the fact that AMD's chipset logic needs to be much less complex than Intel's due to the fact that there is no memory controller. This would allow AMD's chipsets to be smaller, cheaper to manufacture, and cheaper to sell to motherboard makers, thus helping to lower the cost for the end-user.I'm sure this isn't the only reason, seeing as how the actual chipset isn't too expensive either way, but things like the complexity of the PCB needed, the number of surface mount components, etc, probably make up for the rest of it.
just4U - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 - link
Not only that but for the last little while amd has been stuck in the budget bin so alot of the MB's that were popular sellers were in that catagory(manufactuers know whats selling whats not).Jaramin - Monday, March 16, 2009 - link
There are two mistakes in the Intel budget article, in the motherboard section.First, it refers to a E7300 CPU, while the CPU is a E7500. Second, and most important, the motherboard has NO integrated graphics. Either change the mobo, or include an entry level discrete GPU. In any case, you'll have to update the price listing...
mariush - Thursday, March 19, 2009 - link
The AMD Entry Level PC lists:Athlon 64 X2 7750 Kuma 2.7GHz Black Edition (2.7GHzx2 95W 2x512MB L2)
I don't know how they managed to fit 2x 512Megabytes of cache in it...maybe it's KB?
Wesley Fink - Friday, March 20, 2009 - link
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Now corrected.Wesley Fink - Monday, March 16, 2009 - link
My apologies for the error. We are correcting the error as I type this. The last guide revision did include the Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H nVidia GeForce 9400, which is a 9400 chipset Integrated Graphics board. However, when it went to post the $120 price and Gigabyte was right, but the description was the non-integrated board from tn\he earlier Budget Guide.The board name and picture are now corrected. The updated description will post shortly.
Jaramin - Monday, March 16, 2009 - link
The price for the motherboard is still wrong. 120$ in the budget system, 135$ in the HTPC, same motherboard.Wesley Fink - Monday, March 16, 2009 - link
You have revealed one of the biggest problems with publishing prices - they change faster than you can post them. We changed the board in the Intel Budget system this morning to the Gigabyte with the nVidia 9400 chipset and used the correct for today $120 price. We had not corrected the Intel HTPS same board which was still showing the previous price of $135. The HTPC price has now been corrected. Hopefully it will remain accurate for a few days.