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Building a Better Budget PC

 by Jarred Walton on July 10, 2006 8:55 AM EST
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Closing Thoughts

So we tested three "budget" platforms today with varying results. The one firm recommendation we can make should come as no surprise. Simply put, socket 754 is a dead end, even though performance is still generally acceptable. AMD might continue to support it, and the motherboards and chips are on the market at reasonable prices, but for a slight increase in price you will definitely get more potential out of socket AM2 or socket 775. Unfortunately, as nice as the Biostar TForce 550 motherboard appears, it seems to be in need of some updates before it can truly become a great budget overclocker. (Never underestimate the importance of a motherboard BIOS.) Still, we're inclined to recommend socket AM2 right now, as we have yet to see any budget socket 775 motherboards available that will support Core 2 Duo chips. Hopefully, that will change during the next few weeks.

What else have we learned? If you're really interested in high resolution plus high image quality gaming, there's no substitute for a fast graphics card. The 7600 GT is a very impressive card given the price, but you're not going to run UXGA/WUXGA (1600x1200/1920x1200) resolutions with 4xAA on any of the more recent titles. If you don't have a monitor capable of supporting higher resolutions, however, it's currently one of the most reasonable gaming GPUs on the market for SXGA (1280x1024) gaming. A few titles (F.E.A.R., Oblivion, Call of Duty 2) will need to run with lowered detail settings, as will future titles, but unless you're ready to spend $250 or more on the graphics card we would recommend sticking with the 7600 GT. Fans of ATI will get similar performance - better in some games, slightly worse in others - from the X1800 GTO, typically for about $25 more.

Going back to our original budget of $650, there are a few other options that are worth considering. First, we used a socket AM2 Sempron processor, but prices on single core Athlon 64 chips really aren't much higher. Clock for clock, you might get another 5%-10% performance increase, but in the end you're still going to be GPU limited in games. If your primary concern isn't gaming, then you really have to consider what you plan on doing with the computer.

For most office tasks, all of the systems -- even without overclocking -- are more than sufficient. If you plan on running some applications that can benefit from SMP configurations, dual core processors are definitely a worthwhile upgrade. Whether you want to make a purchase of the Pentium 805 now or wait for the reduced prices on Athlon X2 and Pentium D processors that are coming later this month is up to you. It is also worth mentioning that Intel's product road maps don't seem to indicate any new budget chips coming out in the near future; once Core 2 Duo launches, Intel will be further shifting its NetBurst products into the budget price sector, so this overview of the current budget platforms will continue to be valid for several more months at least.

The bottom line? You really can get a ton of computing power for a reasonable price these days. 18 months ago, a $500 computer would have consisted of a moderate Athlon XP or Celeron D processor, 512 MB of RAM, and integrated graphics. Another $150 would have given you an upgrade to a Radeon 9600 Pro and possibly 1 GB of RAM. For now, Moore's "Law" seems to be holding steady, as dollar for dollar we've more than doubled performance. Outside of gaming, many people might not actually need that much processing power, but when Windows Vista launches next year we have a feeling Microsoft will find lots of new ways to bring your computer to its knees. As always, though, we recommend people upgrade only when they personally are unhappy with the level of performance (or stability) that their current computer offers. Something better is always right around the corner.

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