March Value Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 8

Price Roundup

AMD Athlon 64 System

Case: Aspire X-Dreamer II (with 350W PSU) - $52
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3400+ Retail - $220
Cooling: included Retail HSF - $0
Motherboard: MSI K8T Neo-FSR - $69
Memory: 512-MB PC3200 DDR - $68
Hard Drive: 80GB Western Digital SE (8-MB) PATA - $57
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128-MB (AGP) - $188
Monitor: Envision EFT920 19" FS - $143
Sound Card: 6-Channel Integrated - $0
Speakers: Logitech X-530 6-Piece Speaker System - $49
CD/DVD-ROM: AOpen COM5232 Combo Drive - $33
Communications: Onboard LAN - $0
Mouse: Microsoft Intellimouse Optical - $15
Keyboard: Microsoft Multimedia Keyboard - $15
Operating System: Windows XP Home - $79

Total: $988

Intel Pentium 4 System

Case: Aspire X-Dreamer II (with 350W PSU) - $52
CPU: Pentium 4 540 (3.2 GHz) Retail - $218
Cooling: included Retail HSF - $0
Motherboard: EPoX EP-5EPAJ - $80 (+ $4 24-pin adapter)
Memory: 2 x 256-MB PC3200 DDR - $74
Hard Drive: 80GB Seagate Barracuda (8-MB) SATA - $66
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128-MB (PCIe) - $170
Monitor: Envision EFT920 19" FS - $143
Sound Card: 6-Channel Integrated - $0
Speakers: Logitech X-530 6-Piece Speaker System - $49
CD/DVD-ROM: AOpen COM5232 Combo Drive - $33
Communications: Onboard LAN - $0
Mouse: Microsoft Intellimouse Optical - $15
Keyboard: Microsoft Multimedia Keyboard - $15
Operating System: Windows XP Home - $79

Total: $998

Closing Remarks

Over the past few months, the Value Gaming PC Buyer's Guide has undergone an unprecedented series of performance upgrades, each one more significant than the last. It all culminated the last time out, where virtually all performance hardware received a noticeable upgrade, and overall gaming speed rose considerably. The good news is that we have maintained that level of performance, but the bad news is that our only upgrades have been on the visual and audio sides, with a new monitor and speaker selection. Still, the presence of the powerful GeForce 6600 GT 128-MB video card is still quite amazing, and really gives the two systems a nice performance boost. The only area we really continued to make slight concessions on was the monitor, as we'd love to have an extra $75-$100 to nab a 17" 12ms LCD.

Both the AMD and Intel systems continue to look good for March 2005, and both include an attractive mix of mid-range and high-end hardware, with the processors and video cards being the most impressive. These are both serious gaming systems for the class, and it is very surprising what kind of PC you can put together for a cool $1K. Both systems include high-performance CPUs, fast motherboards, 512-MB of PC3200 DDR, 7200 RPM hard drives, CDR/RW and DVD-ROM capabilities, with the powerful GeForce 6600 GT 128-MB being the cherry on top. If overall value is your main goal, these value gaming PCs certainly deliver, and both offer a noticeable price-performance advantage over our higher-priced guide 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.