August Extreme Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 8

Price Round Up

Intel Pentium 4 System:

Case: Cooler Master TAC-T01 Wave Master- $130
PSU: Antec 480W NeoPower Power Supply - $95
CPU: Pentium 4-3.73 GHz Extreme Edition LGA775 Retail - $1,020
Cooling: Thermalright XP-120 w/Vantec Stealth 120mm w/Adapter - $62
Motherboard: Asus P5ND2-SLI Deluxe Retail - $210
Memory: 1GB (2x512) Corsair XMS2 TWIN2X1024A-5400UL - $321
Hard Drive: 2 X Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB OEM - $286
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX - $499
Monitor: Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW 20.1-inch (wide) LCD - $524
Sound Card: Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum - $153
Speakers: Logitech Z-5500 5.1 Digital - $275
CD/DVD-RW: Pioneer 16x DVD+RW/-RW DVR-110 OEM - $52
NIC: Included - $0
Modem: US Robotics External v.92 USB Faxmodem - $52
Mouse: Logitech MX1000 Optical Mouse - $59
Keyboard: Microsoft Multimedia Natural Keyboard OEM - $21
Gamepad: Saitek P3000 Wireless Pad - $31
Operating System: Windows XP Pro w/ SP2 - $146
UPS: CyberPower OfficePower 825VA CPS825AVR - $70
Floppy: Generic Black Floppy Disk Drive - $8

Total: $4,014

AMD Athlon 64 FX System:

Case: Cooler Master TAC-T01 Wave Master - $130
PSU: Antec 480W NeoPower Power Supply - $95
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 939 San Diego Retail - $1,031
Cooling: Thermalright XP-120 w/Vantec Stealth 120mm Fan - $57
Motherboard: DFI LANPARTY nF4 SLI-DR Retail - $187
Memory: OCZ EL DDR PC-4800 Dual Channel Platinum Elite (2x512MB) - $299
Hard Drive: 2 X Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB OEM - $286
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX - $499
Monitor: Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW 20.1-inch (wide) LCD - $524
Sound Card: Creative SoundBlaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum - $153
Speakers: Logitech Z-5500 5.1 Digital - $275
CD/DVD-RW: Pioneer 16x DVD+RW/-RW DVR-110 OEM - $52
NIC: Included - $0
Modem: US Robotics External v.92 USB Faxmodem - $52
Mouse: Logitech MX100 Optical Mouse - $59
Keyboard: Microsoft Multimedia Natural Keyboard OEM - $21
Gamepad: Saitek P3000 Wireless Pad - $31
Operating System: Windows XP Pro w/ SP2 - $146
UPS: CyberPower OfficePower 825VA CPS825AVR - $70
Floppy: Generic Black Floppy Disk Drive - $8

Total: $3,975

Closing Remarks

This month we were able to fit in a number of hardware upgrades that were just out of reach in the last go around. NVIDIA's newly released GeForce 7800 GTX made its way into the guide as our video card of choice, replacing and outperforming even dual GeForce 6800 GT cards. We also performed a memory upgrade on the AMD side, while choosing to make the jump to dual hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration. We did not move our Intel and AMD systems to newer dual core processors, as the drop in single threaded performance would have been too great, especially since this is a gaming oriented system. Overall, this month was a fairly productive one, and hopefully we'll see higher-clocked dual core models, especially on the Intel side, so that gaming performance becomes less of an issue.

We should be seeing something from ATI in the near future concerning their R520 core, as it's unlikely that ATI wants to concede this generation to NVIDIA and their GeForce 7800 series. We are still waiting for ATI to release their CrossFire-enabled motherboards, as it should give NVIDIA's nForce4 SLI a run for its money, and competition is always a good thing. Creative Lab's upcoming X-Fi sound chip looks very interesting, and is being touted as a huge leap forward in terms of sound quality and performance, certainly an improvement compared to the Audigy2 to Audigy2 ZS transition. In the coming months, we'll continue to watch the market in search of faster and even more powerful hardware worthy of our Extreme Gaming PC Buyer's Guide.

* Please note that the prices in our guide do not include shipping costs or taxes. The final system price also reflects a "best case" scenario of finding an online vendor that stocks the majority of internal components, or having access to a number of local computer retailers for system quotes and comparison shopping.