January 2005 High-end Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 8

Price Roundup

Intel Pentium 4 System

Case: Cooler Master WaveMaster TAC-T01-E1C w/Antec 480W PSU - $236
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 560 LGA775 Retail (3.6 GHz) - $449
Cooling: Retail HSF - $0
Motherboard: ASUS P5AD2 Deluxe - $197
Memory: Kingston 1GB Kit (2x512-MB) DDR2-533 PC2-4200 - $220
Hard Drive: Western Digital 250GB 7200RPM SATA WD2500JD - $148
Video Card: XFX GeForce 6800GT 256-MB PCI Express - $445
Monitor: ViewSonic VP171B-2 17" LCD - $349
Sound Card: SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Retail - $85
Speakers: Creative Inspire T7700 7.1 Speakers - $82
DVD-/+RW: NEC 16X Double Layer DVD+/-R ND-3500A OEM- $65
Communications: None or (optional Intel Pro/1000 T or USR External v.92) - $0
Mouse: Logitech MX1000 Cordless Mouse - $63
Keyboard: Microsoft Natural Multimedia Keyboard - $20
Operating System: Windows XP Pro - $131
Floppy: Generic - $8

Total: $2,498

AMD Athlon 64 System

Case: Cooler Master WaveMaster TAC-T01-E1C w/Antec 480W PSU - $236
Processor: Athlon 64 3500+ 90nm Retail - $329
Cooling: Thermalright XP-120 w/Vantec Stealth 120mm - $63
Motherboard: ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe - $188
Memory: 2 X 512-MB Corsair TwinX XMS DDR400/PC3200LL - $277
Hard Drive: Western Digital 250GB 7200RPM SATA WD2500JD - $148
Video Card: XFX GeForce 6800GT 256-MB PCI Express - $445
Monitor: NEC ViewSonic VP171B-2 17" LCD - $349
Sound Card: SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Retail - $85
Speakers: Creative Inspire T7700 7.1 Speakers - $82
DVD-/+RW: NEC 16X Double Layer DVD+/-R ND-3500A - $65
Communications: None or (optional Intel Pro/1000 T or USR External v.92) - $0
Mouse: Logitech MX1000 Cordless Mouse - $63
Keyboard: Microsoft Natural Multimedia Keyboard - $20
Operating System: Windows XP Pro - $131
Floppy: Generic - $8

Total: $2,489

Closing Remarks

Both the Intel and AMD systems displayed significant improvement this month, as we upgraded nearly every facet of the configuration. Our Intel system now includes the high performance i925X chipset, and is matched by Intel's highest-clocked Pentium 4 560 and dual-channel DDR2. Our AMD system kept the Athlon 64 3500+ but upgraded to a new nForce4 SLI motherboard. Moving to a PCI Express video card showed only a minor boost on the Intel side, but the potential for dual SLI cards for our AMD configuration offers a unique and powerful upgrade path. After months of going back and forth, we finally moved to a high end 17" LCD as our main monitor recommendation, and pushed the aging CRT technology to the corner where it belongs. A single higher capacity SATA hard drive displaced our RAID array of smaller hard drives, as the increased cost of our CPU, motherboard and video card selections forced us to make a few minor cuts to stay within budget this month.

Dual-core processors will be the name of the game the next half of this year, as AMD and Intel seem to have pushed their current processor clock speeds as far as they will go. Over the next month or so we will see a flood of i925X and nForce 4 motherboards, which should make for some interesting competition. Furthermore, Intel is preparing to introduce their new 64-bit Pentium 4 processors in hope to stem the spread of AMD's Athlon 64 as the de facto 64-bit consumer processor. SATA2 hard drives with NCQ (Native Command Queuing) should begin arriving over the next few months, hoping to drastically improve the performance of desktop-level hard drives. Our first High-End Guide of 2005 certainly got us off on the right foot, and we look forward to taking the $2,500 budget further than we ever have before.

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. Also, throughout the compilation of this guide, we have made every attempt to ensure availability and realistic street pricing of the included components.