March 2007 Extreme Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 7

Networking: Integrated Dual Gigabit

Current Cost: $0
Consecutive Guides: 12
Price Change: N/A

Both of our recommended motherboards include excellent Dual Gigabit Networking support, making discrete controllers a waste of money and space for most buyers. But those who need more ports might consider an Intel PRO/1000 PT Server Adapter. Intel's long and glorious history in network controllers has all but displaced competitors at this market level, and the PRO/1000 PT is available in single, dual, and quad port designs.

The single port card uses a PCI-Express x1 slot for better flexibility in placement, while multiport cards use an x4 slot. The newer slot standard was chosen because legacy 32-bit PCI can only support gigabit transfers in one direction at a time, while each PCI-Express lane is both twice as fast in each direction and bi-directional. Anyone who can't spare a PCI-Express slot can substitute a 64-bit PCI PRO/1000 MT in 32-bit mode, since these are cross-compatible, but with an obvious loss in performance.

Modem: None

Most gamers have broadband connections, while the few who actually need a POTS (plain-old telephone service) modem will be surprised to find that scarcity has pushed the prices of good parts beyond reason. As of this guide, we no longer recommend modems as default components, but still offer recommendations for interested buyers.

The cleanest modem installations are internal PCI cards rather than external boxes, an option most gamers were once too ill-informed to consider because of latency in "software modems" and the common assumption that all PCI modems fit into that category. But hardware modems were common in high-quality machines a few years ago, and this old-tech can still be found. Among those high quality hardware-controlled modems are the earliest-version US Robotics PCI modems, several early Rockwell chipset designs, and the previously recommended Zoom Telephonics 2920.

An enormous price disparity between new "old stock" and used hardware modems would have the smart shopper searching used parts bins regardless of budget. For those who would rather put up with another box on their desk than search for the right card, an external USB modem such as the US Robotics USR5633 can do the job.

Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2 OEM

Current Cost: $139
Consecutive Guides: 17
Price Change: +$49

This article is about building the top performance gaming systems within a moderately large budget, not necessarily building the "most current" system without regard to functionality. With several unresolved driver issues and program conflicts, Vista isn't ready to be considered the "ultimate" gaming operating system just yet. So we welcome back an old favorite, Windows XP Pro.

The bad news is that the price of XP Pro OEM has spiked as Microsoft tries to push Vista, while business and home users scrounge for the remaining XP copies. The good news is that recent XP Pro OEM packages include an upgrade voucher for Vista, which you can use when the new OS is fully updated.

UPS: OPTI-UPS Enhanced Series ES1000C

Current Cost: $110
Consecutive Guides: New
Price Change: N/A

An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) can be cheap insurance against both power surges (spikes) and brownouts (droops), and even prevent data loss in the event of a complete power failure. The value of this security should never be underestimated for any system, and only increases with the cost of internal hardware.

A portion of this month's Extreme Gaming PC was designed to support a future upgrade from one power-hungry GeForce 8800 GTX to a ravenous SLI set of two 8800 GTX graphics cards and from dual-core to quad-core processors, so UPS output has increased accordingly. Fortunately, we were able to find the well-priced OPTI-UPS Enhanced Series 1000C, a 1000VA unit with an exceptional 700W load capacity.

OPTI-UPS goes a step beyond similarly-priced competitors in both wattage and disclosure. A "typical runtime load" of 45-55 minutes sounds similar to what competing products site, but OPTI also provides the actual runtime capabilities most others won't mention. Specifically, this unit is rated at 3 minutes full load capacity (700W) and ten minutes half-load capacity. The load time numbers may look small compared to the estimated run time, but one must wonder what competitors are tying to hide by not publishing their full and half-load times.

Our configurations are expected to "pull" around 300W of actual power during gaming, so users powering both the system and the LCD display should have over five minutes to save their game and power down if their local power grid ever goes offline. Running less strenuous tasks whenever the grid goes down could bring your "typical runtime" in line with the company's estimates.