January Value Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 8

Price Roundup

AMD Athlon XP System

Case: Aspire X-Dreamer II (with 350W PSU) - $59
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton - $124
Cooling: Vantec AeroFlow VA4-C7040 - $23
Motherboard: MSI K7N2 Delta-L - $73
Memory: 512-MB (2x256-MB) Kingston PC3200 DDR - $80
Hard Drive: 80GB Western Digital SE - $70
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro - $148
Monitor: Samsung 955DF - $193
Sound Card: 6-Channel Integrated - $0
Speakers: Logitech Z640 6-Piece Speaker System - $60
CD/DVD-ROM: AOpen 48x24x48x16 Combo Drive - $47
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: $999

Intel Pentium 4 System

Case: Aspire X-Dreamer II (with 350W PSU) - $59
CPU: Pentium 4-2.66 GHz Retail - $160
Cooling: included Retail HSF - $0
Motherboard: ABIT IS7-E - $85
Memory: 2 x 256-MB PC2700 DDR - $62
Hard Drive: 80GB Western Digital SE - $70
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro - $148
Monitor: Samsung 955DF - $193
Sound Card: 6-Channel Integrated - $0
Speakers: Logitech Z640 6-Piece Speaker System - $60
CD/DVD-ROM: AOpen 48x24x48x16 Combo Drive - $47
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: $1,006

Conclusion

Last month we upgraded a few key components, such as moving to the Aspire X-Dreamer II case, nabbing a Radeon 9600XT, and sliding a Pentium 4-2.66 GHz under the wire. This month was a bit of give and take, but the results are extremely good. The Radeon 9600XT may be an incremental performance jump over the standard Radeon 9600 Pro, but with only a $1K budget, we had to make every penny count. The Athlon XP 2800+ upgrade more than made up for the nominal drop in video card performance, and the addition of the AOpen Combo Drive to the Intel side gives fans a more well-rounded PC than ever before. We're still looking at a pair of value gaming systems that have the performance of a higher-range PC, but at a significantly reduced price.

In our last edition, the Intel and AMD systems were in a dead heat in terms of overall performance, but we have to give the nod to AMD this month. The difference is still quite small, and virtually disappears if you're willing to overclock the CPUs and hit the high end of the Northwood and Barton cores. It's still quite amazing what you can cobble together for a cool grand, and with mid-range processors, dual-channel DDR motherboards, 512-MB of DDR, and a 7200 RPM, 8-MB cache hard drive, you won't be lacking in high-end gaming performance. Our value gaming systems incorporate a ton of hardware power within a $1K budget, and represent a noticeable price-performance advantage over higher-priced configurations.

* 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.