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Sharky Extreme : Monthly Extreme Gaming PC Buyer's Guide |
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Monthly Extreme Gaming PC Buyer's Guide |
August Extreme Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 4By Bao Ly August 3, 2002System Memory
Current Cost: $379 + $118 = $497 The transition to the new RIMM 4200 format does bring with it many positives. The new RDRAM is dual-channel, which takes away the limitation of needing matched paired RIMMs. The PC1066 variety also has an extremely high 4.2 GB/s of bandwidth, making it theoretically the highest-performance memory currently available. Of course, with the good comes the bad, the PC0166 RIMM 4200 is expensive, especially at the higher density models, and the ASUS board only features two RIMM sockets.
We could go the easy route and just take 2x256MB for a grand total of 512MB. This is the least expensive option, but it does fill all available sockets and essentially means tossing out a RIMM if you want to upgrade. Moving to a full GB of memory is not an option, as the price of 2x512MB would break the bank is very short order. So we're cutting a swath between the two options and taking both a 256MB and 512MB PC1066 RIMM 4200 module, and ending up with a more robust 768MB of system memory, while still coming within budget.
Current Cost: $236 X 2 = $472
Months on list: New
High quality DDR DIMMs tend to cost more than the generic variety, but these 512MB beauties from Corsair are to drool for, especially with the nifty heat spreaders that come preinstalled on each DIMM. Since we've got the available budget, we're heading for PC3200 country and the true overclocking heights. No one wants to feel their memory is holding them back from ultra-high FSB speeds, and PC3200 simply eliminates another potential bottleneck. With the ASUS A7V333 limit of 3 DIMM sockets (not to mention the inherently higher OC stability, the fewer DIMMs you have populated) it was a logical choice to slap in a pair of 512MB modules.
Current Cost: $175
Current Cost: $175 X 2 = $350
Western Digital is one of the big time players in the IDE hard disk drive market and their 120GB Special Edition drives are beasts in terms of sheer storage capacity and performance. The drives are blazingly fast with 8.9ms seek times, coupled with a 7,200 RPM rotational speed, and a full 8MB of cache. Most other hard drives have only 2MB, and this additional cache propels the WD Special Edition drives past the IDE competition, and right into SCSI performance territory. With 120GB of disk space, you can afford to do full installs of multiple games without even thinking twice, and with the performance that these drives offer, you might not even have a chance to think twice! The ATA-100 support is not a drawback for the Pentium 4 system, because the motherboard only supports up to the ATA-100 interface. But the AMD Extreme system may suffer slightly in RAID modes because of the board's support for ATA133. It's important to point out why the AMD system has a RAID set up, and the Pentium 4 does not. The AMD system gives up some ground on CPU and memory performance, but that is compensated by the approximately $400 in savings between the two platforms. We felt that the money saved should be put towards an additional hard disk drive for a RAID use in the AMD system (or just for extra disk space in a conventional dual-IDE configuration), along with the above-mentioned 1GB of system memory..
Cost: $46
This is primarily a gaming machine, but with the high-end soundcard, speakers, and monitor that are going to be included, one might be inclined to watch a few DVD movies from time to time. The price difference between a standard CD-ROM and a DVD-ROM is not that much, therefore opting for a DVD ROM in the high end gaming machines is a viable option. For DVD-ROM drives, there are few better models out there than the Toshiba SD-M1612 16X DVD-ROM. This drive is a tray-loading model, which is much more compatible with the smaller sized discs (200MB mini CDs, and 20MB business card type CDs) than their slot loading brethren. Toshiba has been a longtime industry leader in optical drives, and the SD-M1612 is no exception; it's a speedy 16X DVD ROM reader, as well as a non-too shabby 48X CD ROM reader, and to top it all off it can also read DVD-RAM discs. The technical specs are also impressive, with its 85ms access times, and 512K buffer.
Current Cost: $129 Sure there are DVD recorders available now, but the adoption rate is still quite low, and prices on drives and media have prohibited the average consumer from purchasing them en masse. Although this is an Extreme Guide, there's still little point in spending big bucks on a component that will be not utilized as well or as often as a high-end CDRW drive. Having said that, for our machine, nothing but the best CDRW drive will do, and at this point in time, it's the TDK 48/24/48 CDRW. Boasting 48X write speeds, and 16X re-write (24X when media available), 48X CD reading, and 48X Digital Audio Extraction speeds, this TDK CDRW is one impressive piece of hardware. This drive is a powerhouse, offering some of the fastest speeds in all areas, and although it has a smallish 2MB buffer, it includes the standard buffer under-run protection technology to maintain the data flow at high speeds. The included software is impressive as well; as the Nero Express software is not only familiar to most users, but is regarded as the most powerful CD writing package on the planet.
Cost: $8
What can we say about the venerable floppy disk drive? Sometimes you just need one, especially when a pesky NIC requires drivers that are supplied on a floppy, or you want to boot to DOS to flash a motherboard, video card or other peripheral. Just buy a brand name unit and you're set.
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