March Value Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 8

Price Roundup

AMD Athlon 64 System

Case: Aspire X-Dreamer II (with 420W PSU) - $50
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Retail - $163
Cooling: included Retail HSF - $0
Motherboard: MSI K8N Neo4-F - $75 (+ $4 for 24-pin adapter)
Memory: 1-GB (2x512-MB) Corsair Value PC3200 - $67
Hard Drive: 120GB Seagate Barracuda (8-MB) SATA/NCQ - $80
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS 256MB (PCIe) - $181
Monitor: 17" LCD with 8-12ms Refresh - $200
Sound Card: 8-Channel Integrated - $0
Speakers: Logitech X-530 6-Piece Speaker System - $50
CD/DVD-ROM: Gigabyte GO-B5232A Combo Drive - $27
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 420W PSU) - $50
CPU: Pentium 4 630 (3.0 GHz) Retail - $170
Cooling: included Retail HSF - $0
Motherboard: ABIT GD8 (i915P)- $82 (+ $4 for 24-pin adapter)
Memory: 1-GB (2x512-MB) Corsair Value PC3200 - $67
Hard Drive: 120GB Western Digital SATA (WD1200JD)- $65
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS 256MB (PCIe) - $181
Monitor: 17" LCD with 8-12ms Refresh - $200
Sound Card: 6-Channel Integrated - $0
Speakers: Logitech X-530 6-Piece Speaker System - $50
CD/DVD-ROM: Gigabyte GO-B5232A Combo Drive - $27
Communications: Onboard LAN - $0
Mouse: Logitech MX310 - $17
Keyboard: Microsoft Multimedia Keyboard - $15
Operating System: Windows XP Home - $72

Total: $1,000

Closing Remarks

Through 2005, our Value Gaming PC Buyer's Guide has been totally overhauled and attained a level of performance never dreamed of. New hotrod processors and video cards were introduced, which drove mainstream prices down, and our two value systems were the lucky recipients. The beginning of 2006 did not see this kind of wild change, but we did manage to solidify our gaming performance scores by lowering our processors one level, while upgrading our video card from a GeForce 6600GT 128MB to a much faster GeForce 6800 GS 256MB.

Look for more changes in this area, as the price of ATI Radeon X850 XT 256MB cards is dropping fast, and NVIDIA higher-end mainstream products will certainly follow suit now that the GeForce 7600 GT 256MB has been released. We are also keeping a very close eye on the AMD and Intel dual core pricing, as the lower-end Pentium D 820/830 and Athlon 64 X2 3800+ models are starting to get closer to the $200 and $250 marks, and with video card prices continuing to drop, who knows what the next few months will bring.

As usual, both the AMD and Intel systems are looking very nice for March 2006, and these two systems continue to offer mainstream or higher performance, but at a budget price. As we like to say each month, it is surprising what kind of PC you can put together for a cool $1K. At the end of the day, these are two very well-equipped PCs. Our value gaming systems come complete with mainstream CPUs, PCI Express motherboards, dual-channel DDR400, 7200 RPM SATA hard drives, CDR/RW and DVD-ROM capabilities, and an upgraded GeForce 6800 GS 256MB PCIe video card. 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-end buyer's 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.