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Sharky Extreme : Monthly Extreme Gaming PC Buyer's Guide |
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Monthly Extreme Gaming PC Buyer's Guide |
November Extreme Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 5By Ryan "Speedy" Wissman November 17, 2004
Cost: $520 After what seemed like a never ending barrage of delays, quantities of both the ATI Radeon X800 Pro/XT/XT Platinum and NVIDIA GeForce 6800/GT/Ultra cards have reached the mass market. While production of AGP versions of the ATI and NVIDIA high-end parts has finally reached comfortable levels, PCI Express versions of these cards have not. Even if available, the PCI Express version can be significantly more expensive, especially in the case of the GeForce 6800 Ultra boards, and it's the main reason why we didn't move to a PCI Express-based system this month. Unlike the previous generation of graphics cards, neither ATI nor NVIDIA is a clear cut winner, which means that careful attention to overall price, performance, and features needs to be made. This month we upgraded to the NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra 256-MB, as we felt its feature set and overall performance slightly edged out the ATI Radeon X800 XT PE. The eVGA GeForce 6800 Ultra is our favorite among all top end cards as eVGA has great customer service, and the availability and price of their cards has been excellent. The GeForce 6800-based cards have shown a significant performance lead in games such as DOOM 3, and as it has full support for SM3.0, is a bit more future proof than the Radeon X800 Pro or XT. At the time of this writing, eVGA GeForce 6800 GT cards are available at a number of retailers for a retail price of $520.
NVIDIA's latest generation of cards based on the NV40 core is head and shoulders ahead of what the company had this time last year. Completely redesigned from the ground up, the GeForce 6800 Ultra features sixteen pixel processors with six vertex units, or more than double what NVIDIA's previous generation was capable of. This card also has a number of advanced features including 64-Bit texture filtering and blending, Ultra Shadow II technology, CineFX 3.0, and Intellisample 3.0 technology which are featured across all of the GeForce 6800 cards. The eVGA GeForce 6800 Ultra is clocked at 400MHz core and 1.1GHz DDR3 memory, or slightly higher than the GT version we featured in the last guide.
Cost: $602
When it comes to choosing our high-end CRT monitor, there are a few high-end manufactures we look to, and NEC/Mitsubishi continually shines as one of our top choices. We generally like to invest a good portion of our monthly allotment into our monitor because it will be a long-term investment for most. When it comes to selecting a CRT, we look to make sure we get the largest monitor with the best clarity and resolution offered. As LCDs continue to eclipse CRT monitors in terms of sales and performance, we're reaching the end of the road of using a high-end CRT as our top choice. Currently, the price of enthusiast-level, low-response rate LCDs have not dropped to where we feel right including them in this guide, especially when a CRT will perform better than the LCD at a much lower price. With that said, we will continue to recommend the Mitsubishi Diamondtron 22" DP2070SB-BK as our monitor of choice. This flat aperture grill (the kind with two horizontal wires) monitor has a 20" viewable area, a maximum resolution of 2048x1536 at 85Hz refresh rate, and a .24mm dot pitch. Mitsubishi warranties the monitor for three years against defects so it is important that you pick up the retail model for the full protection. The DP2070SB-BK can be found online for about $602.
For those of you willing to venture into the world of high end LCDs, we recommend the Dell UltraSharp 2001FP 20.1" LCD. The UltraSharp does not perform quite as well as our CRT recommendation this month, but for a high-end LCD, its performance and size is exceptional and the price is reaching near affordability. The monitor supports up to 1600x1200 pixel resolution, and include a 16ms response time, 250 cd/m2 brightness, and a 400:1 contrast ratio, making it a top choice for LCD buyers. Currently the 2001FP can be found for under $720, but price aside, it is currently one of our favorite LCD monitors.
Cost: $167
For over a year the Creative Audigy2 ZS Platinum has dominated the high-end gaming audio scene. While this model is only a minor upgrade to the Audigy2, the ZS does add a few notable new features, including a better 108 SNR DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter), 7.1 channel support, the latest in EAX technology, and DVD Audio support. We are using the Audigy2 ZS Platinum edition this month as the lower price affords us some extra budget to use in other areas.
The Audigy2 ZS Platinum includes a remote control and an internal drive bay that has a number of important audio connectors. On the gaming software side the Platinum includes Soldier of Fortune II, and Hitman: Silent Assassin. For audio production there are Native Instruments - Traktor DJ Creative Edition, Ulead VideoStudio 5.0 SE DV, and Steinberg - Cubasis VST 4.0 Creative Edition + Wavelab Lite 2.0. The Audigy2 ZS Platinum can be found online for about $167.
Cost: $219 At this point in time, there are very few movies and games that have full support for 7.1 audio, so it seems almost pointless to include 7.1 speakers for this computer, especially when our choices are limited to only Creative speakers at this point. With that said, we are sticking with the tried and true Logitech Z-680 5.1 speakers. Priced at a slick $219, these speakers won't set you back very much, not to mention these sound excellent when listening to music, watching movies or playing games.
The Logitech Z-680 speakers feature a total RMS burst power rating of 500 watts, and also feature a convenient external DTS and Dolby Digital Decoder. There are a total of four 62W surround speakers, a 69W center channel, and an 188W subwoofer (505 watts total). These are a perfect companion to the Audigy 2 Platinum that we are using again this month, and the Logitech Z-680 are one of the best sounding PC speaker sets we have ever used, which is why we don't hesitate to recommend them in this guide.
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