March 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 - $237
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 560 LGA775 Retail (3.6 GHz) - $419
Cooling: Retail HSF - $0
Motherboard: ASUS P5AD2 Deluxe - $199
Memory: 2 X 512-MB Crucial Ballistix DDR2-533 - $284
Hard Drive: Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250GB 7200RPM SATA 6B250S0 - $157
Video Card: XFX GeForce 6800GT 256-MB PCI Express - $394
Monitor: ViewSonic VP171B-2 17" LCD - $340
Sound Card: SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Retail - $79
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 - $55
Keyboard: Microsoft Natural Multimedia Keyboard - $20
Operating System: Windows XP Pro - $131
Floppy: Generic - $8

Total: $2,470

AMD Athlon 64 System

Case: Cooler Master WaveMaster TAC-T01-E1C w/Antec 480W PSU - $237
Processor: Athlon 64 3800+ Retail - $375
Cooling: Thermalright XP-120 w/Vantec Stealth 120mm - $65
Motherboard: ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe - $175
Memory: 2 X 512-MB OCZ PC3200 EL Platinum Rev 2 - $279
Hard Drive: Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250GB 7200RPM SATA 6B250S0 - $157
Video Card: XFX GeForce 6800GT 256-MB PCI Express - $394
Monitor: ViewSonic VP171B-2 17" LCD - $340
Sound Card: SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Retail - $79
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 - $55
Keyboard: Microsoft Natural Multimedia Keyboard - $20
Operating System: Windows XP Pro - $131
Floppy: Generic - $8

Total: $2,462

Closing Remarks

Last month marked a quantum leap forward for our Intel and AMD systems, and both displayed significant performance and features improvements. This month we already had the benefit of nForce4 SLI and i925X platforms, high-end GeForce 6800 GT 256-MB PCIe video cards and 8ms LCD displays, so the improvements were more subtle. Still, the Athlon 64 3800+ addition will certainly please AMD buyers, while the Maxtor 250GB hard drive (with NCQ and a 16-MB data cache) is certainly a worthwhile upgrade. Moving to low-latency Crucial Ballistix DDR2-533 also gives a performance jump to our Intel system, and our AMD platform also gets a slight boost with the CL2 OCZ PC3200 EL DDR. Otherwise it was a pretty standard month where we enjoyed the usual mix of lower prices and small improvements to the overall hardware mix.

Dual-core processors continue to be the talk of the town, as AMD and Intel seem to have pushed their current processor clock speeds as far as they will go. We hope to see these in a new High-end Guide sometime in 2005, or at least have them drive down prices and allow an upgrade to our processor selection. Intel has released their 64-bit Pentium 4 line, and although these are priced a bit too high for our budget right now, we may see them included in the coming months. Our first two High-End Guides of 2005 certainly got us off on the right foot, and we're hoping to continue the upgrade cycle throughout the year, while taking our $2,500 budget to the limit.

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.