October 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 - $86
Cooling: ThermalTake Volcano 9 - $18
Motherboard: MSI K7N2 Delta-L - $82
Memory: 512-MB (2x256-MB) Corsair PC3200 DDR - $94
Hard Drive: 80GB Western Digital SE - $75
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 - $60
CD/DVD-ROM: LITE-ON 48x24x48x16 Combo Drive - $55
Communications: Onboard LAN - $0
Mouse: Microsoft Intellimouse Optical - $15
Keyboard: Microsoft Multimedia Keyboard - $15
Operating System: Windows XP Home - $84
Floppy: Panasonic, TEAC, etc. - $8

Total: $997

Intel Pentium 4 System

Case: Antec SX630II Case (PP303XP PSU) - $65
CPU: Pentium 4-2.4 GHz Retail - $156
Cooling: included Retail HSF - $0
Motherboard: ABIT IS7-E - $92
Memory: 2 x 256-MB PC2700 DDR - $60
Hard Drive: 80GB Western Digital SE - $75
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 - $60
CD/DVD-ROM: LITE-ON 16X DVD Drive - $28
Communications: Onboard LAN - $0
Mouse: Microsoft Intellimouse Optical - $15
Keyboard: Microsoft Multimedia Keyboard - $15
Operating System: Windows XP Home - $84
Floppy: Panasonic, TEAC, etc. - $8

Total: $998

Conclusion

The rock-hard stability of entry-level prices has led to far more consistent guide than in the past. Over the last few months, we've noticed this trend continuing, and we can only hope that the rumored Intel CPU price cuts do come through at the end of October. Along with moving to the Western Digital SE 8-MB hard drive, we did manage to get one important upgrade to DDR400 (albeit on the AMD side), which does offer additional performance and overclocking stability. The higher relative pricing on the Intel side does make for some budget issues, especially compared against the incredible Athlon XP 2500+ Barton.

Both the AMD and Intel value systems are powerful, and can more than handle the requisite gaming and work. We have managed to keep the basic performance features consistent with a more high-end configuration, such as including dual-channel DDR motherboards, along with very impressive Athlon XP 2500+ and Pentium 4-2.4 GHz processors. 512-MB of DDR certainly doesn't hurt, and the Radeon 9600 Pro certainly keep pace in 3D games and is fully DirectX 9 compliant. Overall, this is quite a bit of hardware power for the $1K budget, and although AMD does get the nod this month, either system would make a great value option.

* 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.