System Buyers' Guide: $700 to $1700

Final Words

Most users that email questions about building a computer system are planning to build a midrange computer system. With a price range of $700 to $1700, this covers a huge number of potential choices. AMD's Phenom II has certainly leveled the competitive playing field in the midrange in recent months. With Phenom II AMD can now effectively compete throughout the midrange, at least to just under the price point of the Intel i7-920 at about $285. Core i7 still wins over any AMD CPU, but all the Core i7 parts have really been high-end up to now.

Looking at the current AMD and Intel CPU prices it easy to say with confidence that you can pick a price where both AMD and Intel compete and find roughly comparable performance from either manufacturer. Even the old "overclocking exception" no longer applies, as the 45nm AMD Phenom II parts are just as overclockable as the best Intel processors. That is very good news for potential AMD buyers.

So far so good, but then comes the $64,000 dollar question: with Intel LGA-1156 due to be announced next month should you buy one of the recommended midrange systems or wait for i5? Unfortunately, we don't have a clear answer for this question, and the answers we do have will not be satisfying to all readers.

If past experience is anything to go by, an announcement of i5 next month may mean it is still months before the new socket 1156 chips and boards are readily available in the market. In addition, early versions of new socket boards like the upcoming socket 1156 often take a while to mature; there are often issues with early boards with a new socket and chipset that take some time - and a few BIOS updates - to resolve. Prices for early adopters are also normally higher than where prices settle once the market pipelines are filled. Early adopters pay more, and since midrange buyers are not normally early adopters they should be less inclined to wait.

Finally, we don't yet have hard performance numbers to truly judge whether i5 is a large performance step forward or merely a technology refresh with a minor impact on performance. We have seen both from Intel in the past and we are still not far enough from the Pentium 4 to blindly trust that new Intel technology will push the performance envelope. We will have answers to the performance question in a few weeks, but that may or may not be a clear-cut answer. All of which leads to our conclusion.

If you are in the market for a new midrange system now you should buy it now. This is particularly true if you are planning to buy an AMD midrange system. Values are at an all-time high and i5 will not likely change the value equation much since Intel already controls the top performance spots. Intel does not have a history of "giving away" performance; they adjust prices when competitive pressures force them to.

History has proven that technology is always evolving and performance is always improving. Those who wait for the latest and greatest usually gain nothing and merely lose the waiting time for the newer technology. Whatever you buy today is almost always improved upon soon after you buy it. If value is good, as it is now, you have no real reason to wait and little to gain. If you have to have the latest then nothing we can write here will likely dissuade you from waiting for LGA-1156, but all indications are that socket 1366 will continue to be the performance king for a while yet.