Kinda Confused...

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zetahammy

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I happened to venture on to this site and was reading a certain artical thanks to Sora's post earlier...

System Builder Marathon: Day 4 | Tom's Hardware

pretty much they take 3 systems of different ranges: a low cost performnace system, mid-range one, and a dream machine.

And of course the mid-range and dream machine proved well during test. But then they made an interesting match up. In which I was kind of confused of the outcome.

Budget Gamer's Special Component Costs
CPU Athlon X2 3800+ AM2 $82
CPU Cooler AMD Boxed Cooler 0
Motherboard MSI K9N4 Ultra-F $59
RAM Wintec AMPO PC2-6400 1GB $70
Graphics GeForce 8800 GTX $540
Hard Drive Samsung HD160JJ - P80SD $51
Sound Onboard Audio 0
Case Coolermaster Centurion 5 $50
Power AeroCool ZERODBA-S620 $125
DVD-RW Sony NEC Optiarc Black AD-7170S-0B 18X SATA

vs

Mid-Priced PC Component Costs
CPU Core 2 Duo E6600 $230
CPU Cooler Cooler Master Hyper TX $30
Motherboard MSI P965 Platinum $135
RAM Patriot eXtreme Performance PDC22G6400LLK $160
Graphics EVGA GeForce 8800GTS PN: 320-P2-N811-AR $280
Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar RE2 WD5000YS $160
Sound Onboard Audio 0
Case SILVERSTONE TEMJIN SST-TJ02SW $100
Power AeroCool ZERODBA-S620 $125
DVD-RW Sony NEC Optiarc Black AD-7170S-0B 18X SATA

the only key notable difference is the video card...

And with all the test it shows that in higher resolutions.. that the budget pc performs a whole lot better than the midrange one.

I know in the article it says its not really a build to recommend, but for the preference of gaming... wouldn't this build make suitable sense?

I don't know..I maybe wrong.. I'm not all that knowledgable and techincal as you guys and perhaps I'm just reading them wrong and just seeing numbers. But if thats the case, then just a few posts to clear things up would be much appreciative.

The only reason why i'm curious about this is because i'm still researching more on building a new rig of my own hehehehe.

Thanks!
 
if you get the 3800+ 65nm processor, you can overclock to good speeds to keep pace with a stock E6600. In which case even at lower resolutions or apps besides games you'll get ~same results.

If I had the money right now I'd get the 8800GTX with the low end stuff, except maybe G.skill 2GB RAM.
 
in gaming it has the edge because of the 8800GTX the ram will limit it slightly but with the onboard ram on the graphics card it wouldn't have a huge effect just not receiving the full potential. Are the monitors used the same as the lower the resolution the less demand it puts on the card so you can get insanely high fps but have rubbish picture quality
 
i think the the 6600 processor one would be better even with the lower graphics. I mean 1 GB or ram under an 8800 gtx?

It seems they went with the powerfulest graphix and stuck a cheap proc, ram, etc on it. It might be feasable if u went using a 6000 series or 7000 series graphics for about 150 bucks or so. Cause the 8000 series has dx10 which xp only goes up to 9. And running vista on the thing will leave about 250 mb room for gaming under basic version and about -100 for aero ( which uses up 1.1 GB easily if more than 3 windows are running )
 
i think the the 6600 processor one would be better even with the lower graphics. I mean 1 GB or ram under an 8800 gtx?

It seems they went with the powerfulest graphix and stuck a cheap proc, ram, etc on it. It might be feasable if u went using a 6000 series or 7000 series graphics for about 150 bucks or so. Cause the 8000 series has dx10 which xp only goes up to 9. And running vista on the thing will leave about 250 mb room for gaming under basic version and about -100 for aero ( which uses up 1.1 GB easily if more than 3 windows are running )

number 1. DX10 games aren't even out yet
number 2. Vista uses up approx 40% of ram not a full gb the visuals aren't that revolutionary my laptop has had 3d effective desktop for a year and it only has 512mb of ram and having multiple windows open is only marginal as generally your only look at one window at a time.
 
i agreee with salty nay. but still i cant see how the budget beat the mid range. wouldnt the 1gb ram really limit some games. thats if they are running on high visuals
 
i agreee with salty nay. but still i cant see how the budget beat the mid range. wouldnt the 1gb ram really limit some games. thats if they are running on high visuals

the better graphics card would compensate so yes you wouldn't have the greatest performance in load times but when actually playing it would be marginal but if you had instead thrown in a 8800gts 320mb there would of been no contest
 
it would have a marginal effect simply because this is such an extreme set of circumstances the 8800gtx plus the ram would be like having one 512mb of ddr4 ram and 1gb of ddr2 so the onboard graphics ram would boost the performance in fast paced game play overall the system would be slower though
 
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