August 2003 Value Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 8

Price Roundup

AMD Athlon XP System

Case: Antec SX630II Case (PP303XP PSU) - $65
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton - $88
Cooling: ThermalTake Volcano 9 - $20
Motherboard: MSI K7N2 Delta-L - $88
Memory: 2 x 256-MB PC2700 DDR - $64
Hard Drive: 80GB Seagate Barracuda V - $78
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon 9600 Atlantis Pro - $150
Monitor: Samsung 955DF - $190
Sound Card: 6-Channel Integrated - $0
Speakers: Logitech Z640 6-Piece Speaker System - $58
CD/DVD-ROM: LITE-ON 48x24x48x16 Combo Drive - $60
Communications: Onboard LAN - $0
Mouse: Microsoft Intellimouse Optical - $15
Keyboard: Microsoft Multimedia Keyboard - $15
Operating System: Windows XP Home - $82
Floppy: Panasonic, TEAC, etc. - $8

Total: $981

Intel Pentium 4 System

Case: Antec SX630II Case (PP303XP PSU) - $65
CPU: Pentium 4-2.4 GHz Retail - $157
Cooling: included Retail HSF - $0
Motherboard: ABIT IS7-E - $95
Memory: 2 x 256-MB PC2700 DDR - $64
Hard Drive: 80GB Seagate Barracuda V - $78
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon 9600 Atlantis Pro - $150
Monitor: Samsung 955DF - $190
Sound Card: 6-Channel Integrated - $0
Speakers: Logitech Z640 6-Piece Speaker System - $58
CD/DVD-ROM: LITE-ON 16X DVD ROM - $28
Communications: Onboard LAN - $0
Mouse: Microsoft Intellimouse Optical - $15
Keyboard: Microsoft Multimedia Keyboard - $15
Operating System: Windows XP Home - $82
Floppy: Panasonic, TEAC, etc. - $8

Total: $1,005

Conclusion

Over the last few months, we've been consistently nabbing performance upgrades in almost all areas. This need for speed caught up with us this month, and we literally hit the wall. Price increases hit many hardware areas, stable pricing is the word of the day in many others, and this all contributed to a static guide update for this month. We're still quite pleased with the overall configuration, especially on the AMD side, where we just can't get enough of those nifty CDR/RW/DVD combo drives.

Both systems are quite powerful, and represent excellent bases for both gaming and work, and for a value PC, it's quite surprising to see a couple of dual-channel DDR motherboards powering mid-range Athlon XP 2500+ and Pentium 4-2.4 GHz processors. Add in 512-MB of DDR333 and a 128-MB Radeon 9600 Pro, and you have a very powerful gaming system for the $1K budget. As with last month, we're not looking for any major product releases to affect our next edition, but instead crossing our fingers for some lower prices and some headroom for our budget. The two main areas relate to Intel, and if Pentium 4-2.4C prices drop, then we're taking the jump. The Intel 848P chipset also presents an interesting alternative, but we'll have to see how the price-performance works out on the upcoming motherboard crop.

* 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.