November 2007 Budget Buyers' Guide
by Jonathan Maloney and Jarred Walton on November 8, 2007 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Closing Thoughts
Generally thought of as no more than the duty of the IT department - and completely devoid of any of the "bling" associated with the midrange to high-end PC market, boutique builders and extreme gaming selections from big PC makers like Dell and HP - the low-end and budget PC sectors are often neglected. However, they play a vital role in sustaining and ensuring a regular product turnover in the market. Without the income that comes from entry-level office systems and budget gaming rigs, we would be bereft of the product innovation and performance that is currently on the market right now.
Looking at the "budget" gaming systems we've configured, you might think at first glance that you are looking at a high-end machine. As we've proven though, high-end performance doesn't necessarily have to come with high-end prices. The market is at an interesting time for CPUs, chipsets, motherboards, and video cards. Intel's Penryn - Wolfdale and Yorkfield - processors are set for release, NVIDIA and AMD are readying their NF7/790 chipsets, NVIDIA has the G92 refresh of the 8800 series underway, and AMD is set to launch the successor to the somewhat disappointing R600, the RV670. While many of these product launches are interesting, most target the midrange and higher markets, and some last-generation parts are now being sold at tremendous values in order to pave the way. That's part of what makes the entry-level market so interesting right now.
Although performance is likely to be higher with the Intel system, particularly with overclocking and at lower resolutions where the processor plays more of a role, the AMD system does come with an SLI-capable motherboard. At resolutions higher than 1680x1050, a dual-GPU solution is often necessary if you plan to play games at their highest settings. Even though the Intel system comes in at a cheaper price and allows for higher overclocking headroom, for gaming we would give the nod to the AMD system - barely. As usual, for gamers the GPU continues to be the bigger concern. The option to add a second GPU down the line, when stock clearances and eBay come into play, makes the AMD platform a slightly better choice. There's also a reasonable chance (no official word yet) that Phenom parts will work in this motherboard, further opening doors for upgrades.
In order to squeeze more performance out of our CPU/RAM combinations, investing in a decent aftermarket CPU air-cooling solution is a good idea. For the budget end of the spectrum, Arctic Cooling's Freezer 7 Pro is still a decent option, while further up the scale we see offerings from Thermalright, Scythe, and Tuniq still holding the top spots in terms of performance.
Never before has it been possible to purchase not just one, but several of this year's hardware highlights in what qualifies for many as a budget gaming system. With DDR2 prices at rock bottom, it makes little sense to select parts from the traditional low-end when a kit from one of the top brands is available for $10 more. As the consumer sales for Micron memory, Crucial has been a market leader in the RAM industry for years now. Being able to include a 2GB (2x1GB) kit of Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800 is not only a welcome surprise but also an indication that we are seeing the closing scenes of the DDR2 era.
Both configurations include proven overclocking motherboards, RAM, as well as CPUs. For the price, we also get simply jaw-dropping graphics performance. PS3 too expensive? If you already need a PC - and most families do - all you need to do now is add a $250 GPU and you've got something that clearly offers more graphics horsepower! With AMD's HD 3800 series still a couple of weeks away from launch on November 19, we feel this represents the best bang-for-the-buck out there. The PC industry is on the cusp of many new product launches, but right now is still a great time to buy.
Generally thought of as no more than the duty of the IT department - and completely devoid of any of the "bling" associated with the midrange to high-end PC market, boutique builders and extreme gaming selections from big PC makers like Dell and HP - the low-end and budget PC sectors are often neglected. However, they play a vital role in sustaining and ensuring a regular product turnover in the market. Without the income that comes from entry-level office systems and budget gaming rigs, we would be bereft of the product innovation and performance that is currently on the market right now.
Looking at the "budget" gaming systems we've configured, you might think at first glance that you are looking at a high-end machine. As we've proven though, high-end performance doesn't necessarily have to come with high-end prices. The market is at an interesting time for CPUs, chipsets, motherboards, and video cards. Intel's Penryn - Wolfdale and Yorkfield - processors are set for release, NVIDIA and AMD are readying their NF7/790 chipsets, NVIDIA has the G92 refresh of the 8800 series underway, and AMD is set to launch the successor to the somewhat disappointing R600, the RV670. While many of these product launches are interesting, most target the midrange and higher markets, and some last-generation parts are now being sold at tremendous values in order to pave the way. That's part of what makes the entry-level market so interesting right now.
Although performance is likely to be higher with the Intel system, particularly with overclocking and at lower resolutions where the processor plays more of a role, the AMD system does come with an SLI-capable motherboard. At resolutions higher than 1680x1050, a dual-GPU solution is often necessary if you plan to play games at their highest settings. Even though the Intel system comes in at a cheaper price and allows for higher overclocking headroom, for gaming we would give the nod to the AMD system - barely. As usual, for gamers the GPU continues to be the bigger concern. The option to add a second GPU down the line, when stock clearances and eBay come into play, makes the AMD platform a slightly better choice. There's also a reasonable chance (no official word yet) that Phenom parts will work in this motherboard, further opening doors for upgrades.
In order to squeeze more performance out of our CPU/RAM combinations, investing in a decent aftermarket CPU air-cooling solution is a good idea. For the budget end of the spectrum, Arctic Cooling's Freezer 7 Pro is still a decent option, while further up the scale we see offerings from Thermalright, Scythe, and Tuniq still holding the top spots in terms of performance.
Never before has it been possible to purchase not just one, but several of this year's hardware highlights in what qualifies for many as a budget gaming system. With DDR2 prices at rock bottom, it makes little sense to select parts from the traditional low-end when a kit from one of the top brands is available for $10 more. As the consumer sales for Micron memory, Crucial has been a market leader in the RAM industry for years now. Being able to include a 2GB (2x1GB) kit of Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800 is not only a welcome surprise but also an indication that we are seeing the closing scenes of the DDR2 era.
Both configurations include proven overclocking motherboards, RAM, as well as CPUs. For the price, we also get simply jaw-dropping graphics performance. PS3 too expensive? If you already need a PC - and most families do - all you need to do now is add a $250 GPU and you've got something that clearly offers more graphics horsepower! With AMD's HD 3800 series still a couple of weeks away from launch on November 19, we feel this represents the best bang-for-the-buck out there. The PC industry is on the cusp of many new product launches, but right now is still a great time to buy.
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JarredWalton - Tuesday, November 13, 2007 - link
Don't forget the display! That adds about $200 if you use the display we selected, so you save a bit of money but get a smaller HDD (1/4 the size), a GPU that's not half as fast as the 8800 GT, and I'd use something other than the ASUS M2A-VM if you're going to have a discrete GPU in there. I'm a bit confused as to whether you were shooting for "budget" or "budget gaming".I try not to repeat stuff on every page, as I assume (possibly incorrectly) that people will read the article as a whole. We do mention the option to get a better PSU on the Intel Gaming page. The reality is, all the good PSUs start at around $60 (PCP&C 360W is $58 shipped). I figure you either get one of the 80% Energy Efficient Certified models, or go with whatever comes with your chosen case.
Hope that clarifies things a bit - we're not saying these systems are the *only* way to go right now, as individual needs will vary. If you're looking at gaming, though, I don't think I'd get anything less than the 8800 GT these days. You can cut corners elsewhere to your hearts content, but there are quite a few titles out that now require a lot of GPU power even at moderate resolutions. (Hellgate: London, for example, is pretty sluggish even on a single 8800 GTX! Same goes for the Crysis demo.)
Crassus - Friday, November 9, 2007 - link
Just as an aside - I remember frequent references to the Anandtech Real Time Pricing (labs.anandtech.com) in the old buyer's guides. That seems to have completely disappeared. I wanted to look up something there and I only get error messages, both in Firefox and IE. Is it me or is it you?phusg - Friday, November 9, 2007 - link
Thanks for the article. Just one grammatical mistake that really grates me:"Even though the Intel system comes in at a lower price" is fine.
"Even though the Intel system is cheaper" is fine.
is not!
Polizei - Friday, November 9, 2007 - link
Bravo, Bravo. I just wanted to say that I greatly appreciate this article. I'm an avid computer enthusiast and have followed Anandtech, HardOCP, and CPU magazine for years. That said, I've never felt it necessary to become involved in the forum thread posting until this article. Far too many websites seem to ignore the fact that stable, overclockable, affordable, and high-performing parts are available if someone needs to go that route. $2,000-$6,000 high-performance gaming systems are often regarded as a must-have for every enthusiast, which limits a great deal of modern society if they so choose to game, watch movies, or just want a faster computer. So again, my hat is off to you guys for finally stepping up and putting together a very good guide for lower-priced rigs that actually don't suck and crash every 5 minutes. Not sure if you follow competitors at all, but Maximum PC Magazine recently did a similar article and it was just atrocious as to how they approached it - http://www.maximumpc.com/article/the_500_pc_build_...">http://www.maximumpc.com/article/the_500_pc_build_...wjl - Friday, November 9, 2007 - link
First: the Intel CPUs mentioned here are not able to support hardware virtualization, which is a major issue for me. You have to get a Core 2 Duo 6xxx for that purpose, and they are still pretty more expensive than AMD's offerings, which all (except the low-end Sempron line) support VT-X (they call it Pacifica).Second: As mentioned here before, considering and testing compatibility with Linux is especially with the low budget model a major issue as well. Integrated Intel graphics would be better in that regard, because they open sourced most of their graphics drivers. For an AMD system, open source drivers will be coming, but at the moment those from nVidia should perform better - and you can select whether you want to use the free nv driver or the unsupported but free (as in beer) proprietary driver from nVidia.
Third: As of today, you should think a bit about the "green" factor. Most of todays CPUs are more than fast enough for any serious work we could throw at them, except maybe video processing. Selecting CPUs like the AMD BE series (with 45W max) or even lower level Intel chips (without virtualization capabilities, as mentioned before) should have been considered. There's also much to think about when it comes to power supplies and so on.
Maybe it's interesting to look at the "Solar PC", built from the guys over at Tom's Hardware in Munich? They ended up with a systems which consumes about 61W when idle - including the monitor! Of course, here Laptops really shine.
With low-cost NAS devices like the IcyBox (or MaPower) available, you could even have thought about thin clients or thin-client-like new offering like the Asus Eee PC (like Asus say, they are selling one each 6 seconds now). For 400$ or 300€, you'll get a neat little machine which can do most of what people want to do with their computers today. Add the same price for a RAID1 NAS, which can be shared within your household, and you'll have the perfect "green" setup.
kind regards,
wjl aka Wolfgang Lonien
(you'll find more thoughts from me on the topic on my pages in the interweb)
Calin - Friday, November 9, 2007 - link
Yes, the 800x480 pixels monitor on an Asus Eee will do great, especially in Windows with its fat themes (XP with default theme, Vista with default theme).Hardware virtualization might be a problem, though I hear it isn't much used for performance reasons.
Low power processors? All the way. By the way, you could get low power from a normal processor by undervolting (and maybe underclocking). Not sure if it's possible on the chosen mainboards.
wjl - Friday, November 9, 2007 - link
Who needs Windows to write a letter or surf the net? I hope that system will be history soon, like the dinosaurs...strikeback03 - Tuesday, November 13, 2007 - link
Considering that the average website these days is designed to target a minimum of 1024x768 resolution, surfing on a smaller screen can be a pain.tomoyo - Friday, November 9, 2007 - link
A gamer would never pick a 5ms TN-Film lcd. Those have a lot of ghosting issues compared to 2ms TN-films.tomoyo - Friday, November 9, 2007 - link
First of all, many components are completely unexplained. Second I dislike a number of the choices, the most major issue being the case/psu. Both case and psu picked are from very low quality makers. These are the types of psus that tend to explode with major load. They should never be recommended to users of anandtech. I'd like to see some more detailed research and explanations that go with a focus on good quality components, rather than trying to keep to some cutrate budget.