Memory and a $1200 Killer Rig

By klsh on March 25, 2003 7:31 PM | | TrackBacks (0)

Anandtech has a memory processor price round up: Weekly CPU & Memory Price Guide: March 2003 1st Edition The Athlon XP 2000+ Thoroughbred looks nice at $75... I like TCWO having bought my last 6 chips there. I just checked and they have this model for $77! w00t. The 1700+ is only $57 bucks! Can anyone say Dual Processor workstation? I built a kick ass rig around the Tyan Tiger S2462 the only caveat, seat the memory outside the case. This box runs dual 1700+ XP's which cost me $139 (each) a while back.

ExtremeTech has a DIY $1200 Killer Rig shoot out.
The Midrange PC where an Epox 8RDA+ goes head to head with an Asus P4PE Black Pearl, the control group gets a Dell 8250.

Analysis and Conclusion We'll touch on the Dell 8250 for a moment. That system costs, as we configured it, over $2,800. That's more than double either of our DIY systems. Certainly if you need the added performance -- for example, you're doing fairly serious multimedia content authoring -- then the added price may be worth the added productivity gain. For most home users, though, the price disparity is too large relative to the performance gain. Hard core simulation enthusiasts are about the only audience that would really benefit from the faster CPU.
There's never been a better time to build an Athlon XP system. The Nforce2 chipset, coupled with the relatively low-cost Athlon XP CPU, make for a very strong combination, particularly in gaming. However, the Athlon XP also proved its mettle in office applications and in some of the media encoding and offline 3D-rendering tests.

While the Pentium 4 does hold its own in a couple of the game benchmarks, most of the offline rendering and the content creation tests, it's not the best time to buy a P4. Intel is readying what may prove to be one of the most substantial updates to the Pentium 4 and its chipset infrastructure in the near future. Note that the P4 would have performed better if our budget had allowed for a Granite Bay dual-DDR or Intel 850E dual RAMBUS motherboard -- but those are both somewhat pricey and dead-end products.

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This page contains a single entry by klsh published on March 25, 2003 7:31 PM.

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