September 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 - $214
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 670 3.8GHz LGA775 - $625
Cooling: Retail HSF - $0
Motherboard: ASUS P5ND2-SLI Deluxe - $190
Memory: 2x512-MB Corsair TWIN2X1024-4300C3 - $179
Hard Drive: Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB 7200RPM SATA 6B300S0 - $139
Video Card: GeForce 7800GT 256-MB PCI Express - $359
Monitor: ViewSonic VP171B-2 17" LCD - $310
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic - $115
Speakers: Logitech THX Z-5300e 5.1 Speakers - $130
DVD-/+RW: Pioneer 16x DVD+RW/-RW DVR-110 OEM - $44
Communications: None or (optional Intel Pro/1000 T or USR External v.92) - $0
Mouse: Logitech MX518 Mouse - $39
Keyboard: Microsoft Natural Multimedia Keyboard - $18
Operating System: Windows XP Pro - $140
Floppy: Generic - $5

Total: $2,507

AMD Athlon 64 System

Case: Cooler Master WaveMaster TAC-T01-E1C w/Antec 480W PSU - $214
Processor: Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Retail - $526
Cooling: Thermalright XP-120 w/Vantec Stealth 120mm - $55
Motherboard: DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 SLI-DR - $160
Memory: OCZ EL DDR PC-4800 Dual Channel Platinum Elite Edition (2x512MB) - $257
Hard Drive: Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB 7200RPM SATA 6B300S0 - $139
Video Card: GeForce 7800GT 256-MB PCI Express - $359
Monitor: ViewSonic VP171B-2 17" LCD - $310
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic - $115
Speakers: Logitech THX Z-5300e 5.1 Speakers - $130
DVD-/+RW: Pioneer 16x DVD+RW/-RW DVR-110 OEM - $44
Communications: None or (optional Intel Pro/1000 T or USR External v.92) - $0
Mouse: Logitech MX518 Mouse - $39
Keyboard: Microsoft Natural Multimedia Keyboard - $18
Operating System: Windows XP Pro - $140
Floppy: Generic - $5

Total: $2,511

Closing Remarks

This month, our main upgrade focus revolved around the sound and video subsystems. We moved from an NVIDIA GeForce 6800GT to the new GeForce 7800GT at no extra cost, and came away with a sizeable performance increase. We threw Creative's new X-Fi sound card into the mix as we were rather impressed by what it brings to the table compared to the old Audigy 2 ZS. Also, as we are still not impressed by single-threaded performance of Intel's Pentium D processors, we decided to update Intel clock speed by 200 MHz, and move to the 3.8 GHz Pentium 4 670. This month proved to be a fairly productive month as we shuffled around a few of our major components and came out with a much faster system with a better feature set.

As soon as Intel releases a dual core processor that can handle single-threaded applications without a sizeable performance hit, we're game. Until then we'll stick with our lightning fast single core Pentium 4 670 (3.8GHz), especially considering the majority of today's games only support one processor. With many of the next generation consoles going multi-core, and dual core and HT making desktop multi-threading the de facto standard, it's only a matter of time before we see widespread use of multi-threading in PC games. By next month we hope to see ATI's R520 chip finally enter the market, as ATI has been taking a severe beating this past year at the hand of NVIDIA, and the GeForce 6800 and 7800 series.

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.