Price Roundup

AMD Phenom X4 System

Case: ThermalTake Armor VA8000BWS Full Tower - $145
Power Supply: Cooler Master Real Power 750W - $150
Processor: Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition (2.5 GHz) Retail - $235
Cooling: 3rd-party HSF - $50
Motherboard: ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe - $220
Memory: 2x2GB Corsair Dominator PC2-8500 (TWIN2X4096-8500C5DF) - $136
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB SATA - $210
Video Card: Radeon HD 4870 512MB - $318
Monitor: BenQ G2400WD 24" LCD - $399
Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer - $80
Speakers: Logitech G51 5.1 Speakers - $150
DVD-/+RW: Samsung SH-S203B 20X SATA - $30
Communications: Onboard LAN - $0
Mouse: Logitech MX Revolution Laser Cordless/G9 Laser Mouse - $79
Keyboard: Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard - $75
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium - $100
Floppy: Generic - $5

Total: $2,382

Intel Core 2 Duo System

Case: ThermalTake Armor VA8000BWS Full Tower - $145
Power Supply: Cooler Master Real Power 750W - $150
Processor: Core 2 Duo E8500 (3.16GHz) Retail - $266
Cooling: 3rd-party HSF - $50
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X48-DS4 - $225
Memory: 2x2GB Corsair Dominator PC2-8500 (TWIN2X4096-8500C5DF) - $136
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB SATA - $210
Video Card: Radeon HD 4870 512MB - $318
Monitor: BenQ G2400WD 24" LCD - $399
Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer - $80
Speakers: Logitech G51 5.1 Speakers - $150
DVD-/+RW: Samsung SH-S203B 20X SATA - $30
Communications: Onboard LAN - $0
Mouse: Logitech MX Revolution Laser Cordless/G9 Laser Mouse - $79
Keyboard: Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard - $75
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium - $100
Floppy: Generic - $5

Total: $2,418

Closing Remarks

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.