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Sharky Extreme : Monthly Extreme Gaming PC Buyer's Guide |
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Monthly Extreme Gaming PC Buyer's Guide |
January Extreme Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 5By Bao Ly January 30, 2003
Cost: $319 The Radeon 9700 Pro is ATi's high-end entry into the highly competitive 3D graphics market, and has left its competition quavering in its wake. Well that might be going a bit too far, but ATi has released a great video card product, and with a renewed effort towards driver development to optimize performance and stability. The Radeon 9700 Pro is loaded with 256-bit, 128MB of 310 MHz DDR RAM (effectively 620 MHz), coupled with a VPU (Visual Processing Unit clocked at 325 MHz. The rendering capability of this video card is untouchable by any other product available on the consumer product, and will in fact let you run today's games at the absolute highest level of performance. Playing at super high resolutions (1600X1200) in current games upcoming games is another plus. The Radeon 9700 Pro also allows you to play games a smooth frame rate at 1024x768 with anisotropic filtering and 4XAA enabled. ATi's patented Smartshader 2.0, Smoothvision 2.0, and Videoshader technologies are integrated into the Radeon 9700, to help bring out higher quality images.
In terms of extra features, the Radeon 9700 Pro has a standard VGA connector, S-VHS out, and a DVI-out connection. Along with its currently unchallenged 3D prowess, the Radeon 9700 Pro still retains ATi's signature trait, superb 2D quality and DVD performance. With the NDA lifted on the NVIDIA Geforce FX Ultra series, it seems as if ATI is still in the clear, and the only real competition to the 9700 Pro, is ATI's own upcoming chipset slated to be released sometime in the first or second quarter. Also keep in mind that while the All-in-Wonder Radeon 9700 Pro remains a bit out of budget, this card is an excellent option for a truly extreme system builder.
Cost: $750
Finding a good monitor is a strange thing, once you've found a great one, there's hardly any reason to try to replace it. Despite my strongest efforts, there still aren't any clear cut options out there that outclass the Mitsubishi 2060U. The 2060u is a 22" monitor with a 20" viewable area. It utilizes their patented Diamondtron tube technology, which is based on the Sony Trinitron tube, but uses just one electron gun for the basic colors (Red, Green, and Blue), the Sony Trinitron uses three. This Mitsubishi monitor is fabulous with great colors, geometry, with a very comfortable refresh rate of 99.9 Hz at 1600x1200. Unfortunately, the Diamondtron technology still suffers the same design as the Sony Trinitron, and there are two noticeable grey lines running horizontally across the screen. However these lines are not as intrusive in multimedia/gaming applications as they are in productivity applications like Word/Excel. Remember, the Extreme Gaming machine is for games, and multimedia, not knocking out reports!
Cost: $165
The Audigy2 Platinum has all of the connectivity, features, and sound quality that the Extreme Gamer demands. It supports 6.1 Audio (6.1 Speakers to follow within the next few months), has 24-bit internal processing, and 24-bit DACs (digital to analogue converter). The overall sound quality has also been improved over the previous Audigy card. The Audigy2 is also THX certified, this label for consumer products simply means that the product has met a set standard for high quality audio input and output. The Audigy2 also has support for pre-encoded Dolby Digital EX (6.1) content. This will be more of a factor once 6.1 speakers are made available for the PC. We're aware of the Inspire 6.1 set, but its low output power, and low quality disqualifies it from placement in the Extreme Gaming guide. Let's not forget that the Audigy2 sound chip is also great for games, EAX HD enabled games such as Warcraft3, and Soldier of Fortune2 seemingly come to life with this amazing soundcard.
Of course, as with all of Creative's previous "Platinum" products, the Audigy2 Platinum also comes with a 5.25 drive bay rack. The Audigy2 Platinum includes the Audigy2 Drive, which includes the following connections: Headphone jack with volume control, Line In (shared with Mic in), Midi in/out, Optical SPDIF in/out, RCA SPDIF in/out, SB 1394 Port, Infra-red Receiver. For additional convenience, the soundcard also comes with a remote. The back of the card has line outs for front, rear, center, subwoofer, and center rear. Additionally there's a line in port, microphone in port, and a SB1394 FireWire port.
Cost: $289
This month we've decided to go with the Creative MegaWorks THX 5.1 550 speakers. These speakers are very nice, with a signal to noise ratio of 99 dB, a frequency response of 20Hz to 25Khz, with a combined 500 Watts RMS of power, and THX certification. T This speaker set includes 5 satellites (70 Watts RMS each), a huge 150 Watt subwoofer with an 8 down firing driver, the necessary cables, and a palm sized wired remote that controls: master volume, balance, treble, bass, mute, center and rear speaker balance. And Creative was smart enough to include a headphone jack for general users, though we've got the choice between it and the head phone jack on our external Audigy2 bay.
With the combination of clarity, and power, the Creative MegaWorks THX 5.1 550 speakers, used in conjunction with the Audigy2 Platinum, and the Mitsubishi 2060u, will entice the end user to listen to their music, play their games, and watch their movies on their Extreme PC.
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