October Value Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 8

Price Roundup

AMD Athlon XP System

Case: Antec SX630II Case (PP303XP PSU) - $75
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2000+ - $93
Cooling: ThermalTake Volcano 7 & Athlon XP Shim - $20
Motherboard: MSI KT4 Ultra - $109
Memory: 256 MB PC2700 DDR - $53
Hard Drive: 60GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 - $91
Video Card: MSI GeForce4 Ti 4200 - $127
Monitor: Samsung 700NF - $170
Sound Card: SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 OEM - $27
Speakers: Logitech Z540 5-Piece Speaker System - $54
CD/DVD-ROM: LITE-ON 16X DVD ROM - $35
Modem/NIC: Creative Labs Modem Blaster 56K PCI or LinkSys LNE100TX - $19
Mouse: Microsoft Intellimouse Optical - $15
Keyboard: MS Internet Keyboard - $15
Operating System: Windows XP Home - $85
Floppy: Panasonic, TEAC, etc. - $8

Total: $996

Intel Pentium 4 System

Case: Antec SX630II Case (PP303XP PSU) - $75
CPU: Pentium 4-1.8A GHz Retail - $129
Cooling: included Retail HSF - $0
Motherboard: EPoX EP-4SDA5+ - $110
Memory: 256 MB PC2700 DDR - $53
Hard Drive: 60GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 - $91
Video Card: MSI GeForce4 Ti 4200 - $127
Monitor: Samsung 700NF - $170
Sound Card: SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 OEM - $27
Speakers: Logitech Z540 5-Piece Speaker System - $54
CD/DVD-ROM: LITE-ON 16X DVD ROM - $35
Modem/NIC: Creative Labs Modem Blaster 56K PCI or LinkSys LNE100TX - $19
Mouse: Microsoft Intellimouse Optical - $15
Keyboard: MS Internet Keyboard - $15
Operating System: Windows XP Home - $85
Floppy: Panasonic, TEAC, etc. - $8

Total: $1,013

Conclusion

While we were able to come in just under-budget for the AMD system, we did go slightly over for the Intel PC. This difference is well within reason, especially given the trade-offs for picking a lower-end component just to hit an arbitrary number. We feel pretty good about each system configuration and the combination of a Pentium 4-1.8A or Athlon XP 2000+, combined with DDR333 and a GeForce4 Ti 4200 makes for a potent combo, no matter your budget.

The two systems also compare quite well in terms of overall performance, and both the AMD and Intel value gaming PCs have the juice necessary to push more-than playable framerates with the hottest games. At stocks speeds, the Athlon XP 2000+ will be a bit faster, but the powerful EPoX SiS 648 board may lower the gap more than you think. Not only will it give you an excellent shot at jacking the Pentium 4-1.8A to 2.4 GHz, but it also offers DDR memory speeds between 333 and 400 MHz. As with our other value guides, there is really no outright winner or loser this time out, only different performance options to explore. Either way you slice it, it's doubtful that any gamer with $1K to spend would turn his or her nose up at these two gaming systems.

When you look at the specs, you can see that even with a limited budget, we can still buy a whole lot of hardware. Both value gaming PCs include a fast CPU, 256MB of PC2700 DDR memory, high-end KT400 and SiS 648 motherboards, GeForce4 Ti 4200 3D video, as well as an impressive mix of hardware peripherals and components. Each edition of the Value Gaming PC Buyers Guide continues to amaze us with the kind of blazing system you can assemble for only $1,000. The big upgrades this month were the processors and motherboards, and helped ensure these two PCs can handle the upcoming crop of 3D games and also be a great performance/upgrade base for the future.

* 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.