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Sharky Extreme : Monthly High-end Gaming System Buyer's Guide |
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Monthly High-end Gaming System Buyer's Guide |
July High-end Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 8By Vince Freeman July 9, 2008AMD Phenom X4 System
Case: ThermalTake Armor VA8000BWS Full Tower - $145 Total: $2,382
Case: ThermalTake Armor VA8000BWS Full Tower - $145 Total: $2,418 Our newest high-end PC buyer's guide provides an updated look at the available AMD and Intel configurations for July 2008. The big news was the release of the ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB and GeForce GTX 260 896MB cards, both of which can handily smoke the GeForce 8800 GTX we selected the last time out. Our final choice of the Radeon HD 4870 512MB is a sound one, as it's top-of-the-line for a single-GPU card, and both of our platforms support CrossFireX. The processors also received an update, including a much-needed one on the AMD side, where the B3 core made an appearance with the unlocked Phenom 9850 Black Edition. The shift to the Core 2 Duo E8500 represented only a slight performance increase, but we'll take what we can get. The upgrade to a Gigabyte X48 motherboard is also significant, although we didn't make the full transition to DDR3 memory. On the memory front, adding 4GB of DDR2-1066 doesn't hurt us on the 32-bit side, but really opens the door to a 64-bit operating system. The full 1TB of hard drive space is a welcome improvement, and we've been waiting to make this upgrade over the last few guides. Other changes, like the BenQ 24" LCD and Logitech G51 speakers, are more cosmetic updates, rather than performance oriented upgrades. Overall, both of these systems look very good, but we'd have to give a slight nod to the Intel configuration for pure gaming speed. 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.
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