December 2005 Value Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 8

Price Roundup

AMD Athlon 64 System

Case: Aspire X-Dreamer II (with 350W/420W PSU) - $50
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Retail - $200
Cooling: included Retail HSF - $0
Motherboard: MSI K8N Neo4-F - $82 (+ $4 for 24-pin adapter)
Memory: 1-GB (2x512-MB) Corsair Value PC3200 - $73
Hard Drive: 120GB Seagate Barracuda (8-MB) SATA/NCQ - $80
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128-MB (PCIe) - $133
Monitor: 17" LCD with 8-12ms Refresh - $200
Sound Card: 8-Channel Integrated - $0
Speakers: Logitech X-530 6-Piece Speaker System - $46
CD/DVD-ROM: Toshiba SD-R1612 Combo Drive - $29
Communications: Onboard LAN - $0
Mouse: Logitech MX310 - $17
Keyboard: Microsoft Multimedia Keyboard - $15
Operating System: Windows XP Home - $72

Total: $1,001

Intel Pentium 4 System

Case: Aspire X-Dreamer II (with 350W/420W PSU) - $50
CPU: Pentium 4 640 (3.2 GHz) Retail - $210
Cooling: included Retail HSF - $0
Motherboard: ASUS P5GPL - $91 (+ $4 for 24-pin adapter)
Memory: 1-GB (2x512-MB) Corsair Value PC3200 - $73
Hard Drive: 120GB Western Digital SATA (WD1200JD)- $65
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128-MB (PCIe) - $133
Monitor: 17" LCD with 8-12ms Refresh - $200
Sound Card: 8-Channel Integrated - $0
Speakers: Logitech X-530 6-Piece Speaker System - $46
CD/DVD-ROM: Toshiba SD-R1612 Combo Drive - $29
Communications: Onboard LAN - $0
Mouse: Logitech MX310 - $17
Keyboard: Microsoft Multimedia Keyboard - $15
Operating System: Windows XP Home - $72

Total: $1,005

Closing Remarks

Throughout 2005, our Value Gaming PC Buyer's Guide has gone through a series of upgrades, ranging from nominal to very significant, and as the final update for 2005 is in the books, it makes a good time to reflect. The overall system configurations are very impressive, and all of the performance components have been significantly upgraded over the past year. The combination of a mainstream Athlon 64 and Pentium 4 processors, coupled with GeForce 6600 GT video and a high-performance motherboard with 1-GB of PC3200, is certainly nothing to sneeze at. This month we also allocated resources toward one very important component, the monitor. The move to a 17" gaming-grade LCD is a very significant transition, and one that helps us end 2005 with a bang.

Both the AMD and Intel systems are looking extremely nice for December 2005, and for all intents and purposes, these offer mainstream or higher performance, and are not slouches in the features department either As we like to say each month, it is very surprising what kind of PC you can put together for a cool $1K. At the end of the day, these are both extremely attractive value gaming systems, complete with mainstream CPUs, PCI Express motherboards, 7200 RPM SATA hard drives, CDR/RW and DVD-ROM capabilities, and a powerful GeForce 6600 GT 128-MB PCIe pumping out the game framerates on a 17" gaming-level LCD. If overall value is your main goal, these AMD and Intel 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.