Normally your typical gamer or hardware enthusiast cringes at the thought of a budget sub-$1000 system. These systems are frequently equipped with value processors from AMD and Intel, and ship with integrated graphics solutions, or lethargic graphics cards that are often incredibly outdated. As you’ve just seen in our budget system build today though, this doesn’t have to be the case.
For just over $700, we built an Athlon 64 3000+ system with 1GB of DDR400 RAM, a 200GB Serial ATA HDD with 16MB cache and NCQ support and ATI’s 12-pipeline RADEON X800 256MB. A year ago it would’ve cost twice as much, if not more to build a system capable of delivering this much performance. It’s pretty amazing just how quickly things can change in just one year huh?
As you saw in our performance benchmarks, the budget rig delivered pretty good frame rates for the most part, although its performance was often overshadowed by the more expensive systems we’ve built in the past. Of course, do keep in mind that the high-end and $1,000 systems are built with next-gen graphics technology that hasn’t quite made its way down to the mainstream price point. Once ATI and NVIDIA deliver their next-generation mainstream cards, the margins between budget, mainstream, and high-end systems will close considerably.
It’s for this reason that you may want to hold off if you’re in the market for a new graphics card in the $100-$300 price range. With new hardware for this price segment on the way, performance will soon be going up, while prices will go down. We’ll of course be covering these cards once they’re released, so be on the lookout for that.
Until then, hopefully today’s system build provides some guidance on what kind of components you can get for an approximately $600-$700 system build. As always, feel free drop your thoughts on the components selected in the news comments!
Elemental: War of Magic Brad Wardell Interview
Elemental: War of Magic is an unabashedly deep and complex PC exclusive, made by gamers for gamers, that melds the turn-based strategy and role-playing genres. It could only come from Stardock, a company small enough to take risks and innovate, but big enough that it can secure its own distribution and make those ambitions a reality. We were able to have a lengthy, in-depth chat with their fearless leader about Elemental, as well as the state of the gaming industry and Stardock’s role in it, so grab a beverage and read on!
Minecraft: The Coolest Game You've Never Heard Of
Minecraft is an indie sandbox game that has been getting a lot of attention from the press lately. The Alpha version is updated weekly by its creator Markus Persson (AKA Notch) and it has been sucking up my free time like a freakin’ vacuum. Not too often does a 15MB java app compete for attention with new releases from major studios…
What makes this game so special and why should you be playing it? Read on in today’s article!
Gigabyte Radeon 5830 Review
With dual fans and copper heatpipes, Gigabyte's Radeon 5830 board is designed for enthusiasts who value excellent cooling. See how this board performs and overclocks in today's review!
StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty Review
After 12 years of waiting, fans of Blizzard's StarCraft RTS finally have a sequel to play. StarCraft 2 focuses on just one race though, Terrans, and it lacks LAN play. Activision is also selling it for $60. With so many limitations, is Wings of Liberty worthy of the StarCraft 2 name? Vandy seems to think so...Read on for the full review!
EVGA GeForce GTX 460 768MB Superclocked Review
If you're one of NVIDIA's board partners, how do you improve upon the GeForce GTX 460 GPU? If you're EVGA, you OC the board, add a lifetime warranty with their Trade Up program, and bundle the card with killer utilities for OC'ing and stress testing your graphics card...And don't forget a free game. See how the board fares in today's review!
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 Performance Preview
Priced from $199-$229, the GeForce GTX 460 cards brings NVIDIA's Fermi architecture to new price points. And armed with 336 CUDA Cores, 7 PolyMorph Engines for tessellation, and high clocks, it doesn't disappoint when it comes to performance...and power or GPU temps. See how the board performs in comparison to cards ranging from the GeForce 8800 GTS to the Radeon 5830 in 3D gaming, PhysX, and 3D Vision in today's article!
Crank That S#!T Up! Contest
Interested in winning a liquid-cooled, 3-Way SLI GeForce GTX 480 Maingear PC with 22" 3D display? We've partnered with NVIDIA and Maingear to bring one lucky FiringSquad reader this top-of-the-line system. Benchmarks and pictures inside!
Introducing Joel Durham Jr
If you've been looking for fresh, new articles to read, good news: the wait is almost over. Our new EIC, Joel Durham Jr. introduces himself in this editor's letter.
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Performance
Intel is no longer the only game in town if you want a 6-core desktop CPU. The Phenom II X6 1090T packs six cores in a highly overclockable package that sells for less than $300. The CPU also features AMD's Turbo Core technology, which can OC the CPU's cores by up to 400MHz. See how it fares against the similarly-priced CPUs from Intel in today's article!
ATI Radeon 5870 3-Way Roundup
In the market for a new Radeon 5870 card? If so, you'll definitely want to check out today's article. Inside we've got three factory OC'ed 5870 cards from MSI, Gigabyte, and HIS. The Gigabyte board is OC'ed to extraordinary speeds, while MSI's Lightning card features 15-phase power and dual 8-pin power connectors. Finally, the HIS board combines custom cooling with high clock speeds. See how the boards compare to each other and the ATI reference design inside!
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