Holiday Buyers Guide, Part I: CPUs, GPUs, Mobos, and RAM
by Editorial Staff on November 21, 2007 2:01 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Closing Thoughts
We decided to skip right past the appetizers and go for the main course, so now you should all have a decent idea of what your options are for putting together any decent computer upgrades this holiday season. We will return shortly with a look at some of the other accessories and various other goodies you might like to find stuffed in your stockings. (Again, feel free to insert whatever politically correct equivalent you desire.) Having just laid the foundations for potential computer upgrades, let's take a step back and look at the bigger picture for a moment.
Depending on what you want to do with your computer, you may find the entry-level options more than sufficient. In terms of CPU processing power, today's entry-level computers are easily able to best just about anything from two years ago. Affordable dual-core processors run circles around Pentium 4 Hyper-Threading chips, and they do so while using less power. If you need more number crunching prowess, now is a great time to upgrade. That said, if you don't require a lot of performance - surfing the Internet and reading email generally doesn't qualify as "heavy multitasking" - even a system that's three or four years old should work fine. A few upgrades in other areas might still be useful, however.
One of the easiest upgrades to make, and one that can have a dramatic impact on overall system responsiveness, is to add more memory. Budget and even midrange computers from several years back might have a paltry 512MB of memory - in some cases even less! Not all motherboards can handle larger memory modules, so some research prior to investing money in more memory may be required, but if you can get your system up to 1GB or 2GB of memory you might quickly discover that there's no need to upgrade anything else. Just make sure purchase the correct type of memory, and in some cases that might not be practical. In other words, we wouldn't recommend purchasing RDRAM or SDRAM, and if you have to get some DDR memory we would see about someone trying to get rid of their old stuff rather than buying new. If you can score 2GB of DDR-400 for $50, an older Pentium 4/D or Athlon 64 system can still run most applications without trouble.
Those interested in running games, not surprisingly, are going to have higher requirements. For modern gaming, we wouldn't think about trying to get by with less than 2GB of RAM. You'll also need a reasonably fast graphics chip, preferably at least a GeForce 7800/7900 or Radeon X1800/X1900 or better. If you don't have something like that already, there's a good chance you're running an older AGP graphics card. If you're hoping to find a faster AGP solution without spending a lot of money, you're probably spinning your wheels; bite the bullet and upgrade to a PCI Express platform. That might mean you need to upgrade your processor and memory as well, but if you've managed to limp along in games so far, the latest titles are ready to put the nail in your AGP coffin.
The last item we've discussed today is sort of odd man out when it comes to upgrading. Generally speaking, we don't usually find ourselves in need of a motherboard upgrade unless we are also planning on changing processors and perhaps memory and/or graphics cards as well. About the only other time you need to buy a new motherboard is if your old one breaks. In that case, compatibility with existing components is probably going to take precedence over new features; otherwise you're back to upgrading everything again.
While we've covered plenty of options, there are more products and technologies coming that will help keep things interesting. In the graphics department, we have the potential for running three or four AMD cards on the appropriate platform. If everything works okay with the drivers, the potential performance increase sounds great. Then again, we all saw how easy it was for NVIDIA to stay on top of Quad-SLI driver support. Speaking of which, NVIDIA also appears to be ready to run more than two cards in SLI. So the multi-CPU wars between AMD and Intel will soon extend to multi-GPU wars for AMD and NVIDIA. As long as compatibility and performance make adding more GPUs a worthwhile proposition, we're willing to give them a chance. Considering we still encounter issues with new games and CrossFire/SLI compatibility, though, we'd like to see more work on that area before marketing starts to sell people on three or four graphics cards.
We also have new chipsets, additional CPUs, and DDR3 price reductions to look forward to… and that's only looking at the four major components for computers. We will have an additional Holiday Buyers' Guide out before the Black Friday sales strike, looking at many of the other components and other techo-accessories. If you have money, rest assured we'll provide ways for you to spend it!
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23 Comments
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rudreshsj - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link
the last buyers guide was way back in november the market has substantially changed after that ... pls post a newer updated guide.THX
imperator3733 - Friday, November 30, 2007 - link
On page 2 in the part on the QX9650, you say that the QX9650 has "2x6MB vs. 2xMB on the Q6xx0". It should say "2x4MB", not "2xMB".ac3shi6h - Monday, November 26, 2007 - link
Just upgraded, everything from Newegg.Under $400******
GIGABYTE GA-M57SLI-S4 - $89
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition $129
MSI NX8600GTS Diamond Plus GeForce 8600GTS 256MB $149 -$20= $129
Patriot Extreme Performance 2GB DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 PDC22G6400LLK 79 - 40= $39
*******
Total = $389,-
Can't beat this value in upgrading from 939 x2-4200+ with a 7800gs
3dmark05
OLD
3dmark = 6932
3d cpu = 6095
New (cpu @ 3ghz 15x multiplier)
3dmark = 12234
Cpu = 7422
Now I probably would have gotten better scores if I spend a little more, but at a 400 dollar budget I don't think I could have gotten any better then this. The only thing I forgot to order was a heatsink.. that bumped me up to 409,-... still though.. I couldn't find any sli capable deal for anything less...
AceY
strikeback03 - Monday, November 26, 2007 - link
We need to build a new computer to interface with our microscope for the lab. Don't need 3D capabilities to speak of, but does need to be able to run a pair of CRTs at 1600x1200 and have Firewire. I checked out the Gigabyte motherboard suggested with the Intel build, but the Gigabyte website says the DVI output cannot be used with an adapter to D-Sub. Can you confirm if this is true, or recommend any other boards that might fit the bill? Or should we just look for a discrete card for either graphics or Firewire?tshen83 - Saturday, November 24, 2007 - link
I agree that the 8800GT is in short supply. However the Radeon HD3870 is also in short supply, if not worse than the 8800GT.Look at the MSRP. AMD advertised 219 as the MSRP, however, newegg and buy.com both raised the price to 269. And you still cannot buy them.
It looks more and more that the HD3870 is here for benchmark purposes, whereas the HD3850 is really what AMD wants to sell. But the Radeon HD3850 is really slow, in my mind, not worth 180 dollars when the 8800GT 512MB is selling for $208:
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/games/...">http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/prod...mp;dgc=C...
JarredWalton - Sunday, November 25, 2007 - link
We actually aren't too surprised, but the text was written last week when supply of 3850/3870 cards was better. That's why we state, "While we're on the topic of availability, we must say that we don't know how long AMD will continue to keep up with demand for the Radeon HD 3850/3870. As with the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT, many resellers are now backordered and we wouldn't be surprised to see prices begin climbing."JarredWalton - Sunday, November 25, 2007 - link
On a related note, Dell currently has a killer deal on an 8800 GT 512MB card. How long will it last, and how long will it take to get the card if you order right now? Well, those are questions we don't have answers to right now. Still, if you're interested in an 8800 GT card, http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/Games/...">here's the link(I don't know if that's the correct way to link, and the link buttons appear to be broken. Anyway, you should at least be able to see the URL; go to Dell.com and search for 8800GT if you need to.]
FrankM - Friday, November 23, 2007 - link
Am I the only one feeling that there's a bit of a gap between the IGPs and the ~$200 mainstream cards that you called "budget"? I sort of agree that there's not much worth getting between these extremes for current games, but 8600GT @ ~$100 runs OK on medium resolutions and settings, and also offloads HD-media from the CPU.Also, calling ~$200 cards "budget" is a bit weird. Not so long ago, that was mainstream, with budget being sub-$100...
JarredWalton - Friday, November 23, 2007 - link
Well, we did mention them: "There are cheaper graphics cards that provide adequate performance and DirectX 10 support, but the difference in performance between the $100 you might spend on the Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB/GeForce 8600 GT 256MB and the HD 3850 is substantial. Let's not even get into a discussion of performance requirements for Crysis, Hellgate: London, or Unreal Tournament 3. Needless to say, there are plenty more titles coming out where $100 graphics cards will need to drop down to lower resolutions and medium detail settings in order to provide adequate performance."Chubbbs - Thursday, November 22, 2007 - link
"the G35 is next week"Yes, finally!! This is the platform I've been patiently waiting for. Not all enthusiasts are gamers. Some of us want a superior workstation without the cost, power consumption, acoustics, and binary blobs associated with discrete graphics. All we ask is for is modest composite and decode acceleration and a digital output (two would be nice). But that doesn't mean we don't want a premium ATX board with 8 SATAs, solid caps, and effective chipset radiators.
There *is* a retail market for a $150-200 motherboard with integrated graphics. In fact, if we're going to pay $200 or more for a motherboard, shouldn't we expect it to include onboard graphics? It's not like it precludes adding discrete graphics, and it offers a much lower power mode for those rare moments when you're not gaming. I look forward to AT's in-depth analysis of Intel's long-overdue foray into integrated graphics for the midrange performance market.