Buyer's Guide: High End System - May 2004
by Wesley Fink on May 26, 2004 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Monitor
Recommendation: Samsung 1100DF 21" (20" viewable) DynaFlat CRTPrice: $447shipped
With even further price reductions, the Samsung 1100DF delivers superb value in a 21" monitor. 21" is a great size for gaming at high resolutions with the new video cards and the Samsung 21 does not disappoint. The 1100DF is capable of refresh rates of 75Hz at 2048x1536 and 85Hz at 1280x1024 and has a dot pitch of 0.20mm. Text clarity is very impressive, glare is non-existent, and gaming performance is top-of-the-line. There are more expensive CRT monitors, but the performance and reliability of this Samsung 21" continues to impress us. The only drawback, as with any large CRT, is the space required to house the monitor. If space is a premium, then take a closer look at our flat panel alternative.
Alternative: Samsung 193P Flat Panel Silver
Price: $778 shipped
While there is no doubt that CRT monitors still represent the best value and best performance for gaming, things continue to improve rapidly in flat panel technology. No High End Buyer's Guide would be complete without a recommendation for a flat panel. Samsung has a sterling reputation for the performance of their flat panel displays, and Samsung's 3rd generation 19" Flat panel has finally started arriving at on-line retailers. The price will likely fall a bit further as stock becomes more readily available and competition increases. Basically, the 193P improves on the very well-regarded 192T with even faster 20ns response times and a greater 800:1 contrast ratio. There are even faster response times available in the market, but for overall balance in a flat panel, Samsung always seems to provide a very good mix of features and performance. The 193P also provides both DVI and standard analog inputs for flexibility and performance. You can find more details on the 193P in the AnandTech exclusive review that was posted last month.
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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MadAd - Monday, May 31, 2004 - link
I just wish you guys would do a 'dream' system, money NO object - us geeks like to dream, even if we cant afford fibre raided flash drives and $2000 sound setups ..... it only has to be like once every 3 months or so, just for drooling rights - awww go on :)Ma10n3 - Monday, May 31, 2004 - link
This comment thread seems to be pretty dead now, but I thought I'd just tack this on...Maybe there should be a high-end gaming system and a high-end everything-but-gaming system.
A lot of newer game engines are SMP capable though, so the two may become one in the near future.
qquizz - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
GLARING ERROR ALLOWED TO STAND:As noted days ago in this forum, I can't believe Anandtech has allowed this error not to be changed yet in this sentence in the storage section of the article:
"Those concerned about data security more than ultimate speed can configure the drives as RAID 0, or mirroring."
Ma10n3 - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
I wish I could just edit one of the posts above... Anyway, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense that the Iwill doesn't support DDR400 though because the memory controller is on the processor die. ???But, if the manufacturer doesn't claim it supports it, than it seems reasonable to go with a manufacturer that does. After all, when you're spending this much money on a system, compatibility becomes very important!
Ma10n3 - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
Uh, scratch the Iwill board. It only supports up to DDR333!Looks like the TYAN Thunder K8W is about the only choice.
Ma10n3 - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
Roostercrows, another motherboard that supports all the features listed above is the Iwill DK8X.Can't seem to find any others...
Ma10n3 - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
#52, If you are considering a dual-opteron setup, than I should also let you know that the only mobo I could find that uses the NUMA (microsoft.com has quite a bit of info on NUMA) configuration and has AGP8X, PCI-X, and legacy PCI is the TYAN Thunder K8W. If anyone knows of any others that have all these features, please post the info.roostercrows - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
#50, Yes, I did read all the posts including #39and I didn't mean to imply that you used the term best "bang for the buck". sorry if I gave that impression.
I'm building a new computer and have the dual raptor hard drives and one maxtor 200 GB, power supply from PC power & cooling, video card X800, monitor (not my white wall #51 but that was funny), case is a coolermaster stacker, I'm trying to decide which processor and mobo to use and this was the first I had heard of possibly using a dual opteron and it sounds interesting as cadcam use is part of my goal but I need to learn a lot more. Thanks for your opinion since the WinXP64 is what I'm building the system for.
Neekotin - Friday, May 28, 2004 - link
yo guys, it just hit me. this is a high-end sys... why not get a white wall and good projector, imagine your monitor as the entire wall. ;)Ma10n3 - Friday, May 28, 2004 - link
#49, Did you take a look at the article listed in post #39?Oh, and I at least never claimed a dual-processor system gives you more "bang for the buck." I do believe it gives you quite a bit more mileage out of the hardware you purchase considering the direction Windows is heading (referring to Windows XP 64-bit edition, of course). Also, the benefit of doubling the memory bandwidth as well once WinXP64 is released (because of NUMA support) should increase performance in all applications, 32 or 64 bit. The legacy PCI bus is a severe bottleneck to all connected peripherals largely due to the fact that they all have to share the same bandwidth. Most of the newer dual-processor boards offer alternatives to just a single legacy PCI bus because of the chipsets they use and features of the AMD Opteron cpus.
Considering all of the above, I don't believe an Intel dual-processor system contains enough worthwhile features to justify the purchase.
Again, as far as the hard numbers, please refer to the URL listed in post #39.