System Builder Marathon: Performance and Value

[caamsa]

you got your 3850

LOL my bad I mean my 4850....I imagine if I had a 3850 I would be in pretty bad shape. ;-P I wonder what the most popular monitor resolution is.....I would imagine mine would be a close second with 1440 x 900 and 1680x1050.

Don't you think my system could handle 1680X1050? I think it would do rather well but it would not play on the highest settings.

These articles are interesting. In my opinion if you are spending over $4000.00 bucks on a system then you either have money to burn or use it for a business. I doubt too many people spend that money just so they can play crisis on the highest settings. I think if you are building a system from the ground up then $1000.00 to $1500.00 is reasonable.

 

[doomsdaydave11]

Man it seems like a $750 system would really be golden for 1440x900 or 1680x1050 gamers. This gives highschool and college kids a good chance to get an awesome gaming system for cheap!
You can get:
Q6600, 4GB DDR2-800, HD4870, 500GB Seagate, Antec 300 Case, Corsair VX550W, P45 mobo, ACF7P cooler, and P45 mobo all for under $800!

 

[cjdavis7]

Excellent article! I really liked how you summed everything up at the end. It's obvious you guys listen to all the comments and take them into account in future articles. Thanks.

 

[V3NOM]

yeah i think $500 really is a bit TOO budget. for just a couple hundred dollars better you can get something that is much better price/performance wise.

 

[skora]

When looking at the SBM, I think rebates really should be included for the budget system. Think about it, the best bang for the buck type of builder isn't going to say rebate money isn't as good as real money. And those little $10-$25 bumps to the budget PC are huge to add in upgrades. I'm building a system now and because of rebates, I'm getting a whole lot more computer than I would otherwise. ie a Asus P5Q-Pro and 2 gigs ddr2-800 for $91! That will step me up from the e2180 to a E5200 or E7400, and use a HD 4850 vs the 8800gt and still come in under $500. THG, do a survey of budget builders to see if there's enough of us that do calculate rebates in to use these on the SBMs. I think you are doing an injustice to the budget builder where they aren't getting the most for their money. At the least, add a note to the budget build as how much would have been saved if rebates were used and what you would use those resources for to upgrade.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]skora[/nom]When looking at the SBM, I think rebates really should be included for the budget system. Think about it, the best bang for the buck type of builder isn't going to say rebate money isn't as good as real money. And those little $10-$25 bumps to the budget PC are huge to add in upgrades. I'm building a system now and because of rebates, I'm getting a whole lot more computer than I would otherwise. ie a Asus P5Q-Pro and 2 gigs ddr2-800 for $91! That will step me up from the e2180 to a E5200 or E7400, and use a HD 4850 vs the 8800gt and still come in under $500. THG, do a survey of budget builders to see if there's enough of us that do calculate rebates in to use these on the SBMs. I think you are doing an injustice to the budget builder where they aren't getting the most for their money. At the least, add a note to the budget build as how much would have been saved if rebates were used and what you would use those resources for to upgrade.[/citation]

No, and for a few great reasons:

1.) If you only have $500 to begin with, you can't spend $600 and wait for rebates because you only have $500.

2.) Many (most?) rebates are scams based on the waiting game: The company expects you to forget to send in the forms. When you surprise them by sending in the form, they pretend to lose it. You'll notice that many companies make you wait 60-90 days for your rebate? That's so you'll forget. When you call them back in 60-90 days, they say they lost your rebate and you need to file a claim, etc. They continue to give you the runaround so that only the most persistant customers prevail...usually in 8-10 months.

3.) The rebates that are in effect when Tom's Hardware orders its parts are often not the same rebates that are in effect when Tom's Hardware publishes the article.

 

[slomo4sho]

EVGA 256-P2-N761-TR GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB
Bundled with
OCZ SLI-Ready 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Chan
http://secure.newegg.com/Shopping/AddToCart.aspx?Submit=ADD&ItemList=Combo.138019
$84.99- $65.00 in MIR = $20.00

 

[caamsa]

In regards to rebates, only one time I did not get my rebate and it was actually my fault. But it is true that you often have to email or call them to remind them to send it or else they will not send it to you.

Yes rebates should not be included in the price of the computer since it is not a 100% guarantee that you will get them.

 

[scryer_360]

I'd just like to say: in the past, people have ridiculed Toms for these builds. I've sometimes been on the firing line with them.

These most recent builds are for once almost 100% logical. The only place anyone should knock Toms on is the fact that prices are lower now, and its not even a really valid complaint (after all, its not like they can just build it and benchmark it in the same day, its nary impossible to order parts like that).

So I say congrats Toms, these are all well built systems with good price points. The average gamer would do well to heed your advice and build along the lines you have.

 

[jawshoeaw]

Hmm, to answer my own question about what $500 buys you, I went to Dell. E7200, Vista Home Prem, 1 yr warranty with onboard graphics, $469. You can then add whatever video card. For an E2200, it's more like $369.
Not that I'd ever buy a Dell, it's too much fun to build my own, but it doesn't look like building your own saves you that much.

And for those of you who love to complain about Dell (or HP), their warranty support is surprisingly good. I had a Dell laptop fixed in 48 hours!!! And that was the basic one year warranty. Airborn express both ways no cost to me. Again, i don't advocate buying prebuilts, this is Tom's after all, but it's a little frustrating that components cost so much retail. Especially b.s. "high end" components.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]jawshoeaw[/nom]Hmm, to answer my own question about what $500 buys you, I went to Dell. E7200, Vista Home Prem, 1 yr warranty with onboard graphics, $469. You can then add whatever video card. For an E2200, it's more like $369. Not that I'd ever buy a Dell, it's too much fun to build my own, but it doesn't look like building your own saves you that much. And for those of you who love to complain about Dell (or HP), their warranty support is surprisingly good. I had a Dell laptop fixed in 48 hours!!! And that was the basic one year warranty. Airborn express both ways no cost to me. Again, i don't advocate buying prebuilts, this is Tom's after all, but it's a little frustrating that components cost so much retail. Especially b.s. "high end" components. [/citation]

BS high-end components are where you save the most money. A PC similar to Tom's Hardware's BS high-end system costs around 25% more from other companies.

 

[Guest]

luciiacob wrote:
"Also, are you really going to spend 500$ on a new rig if you've spent 800$ 1½ years ago? Since my first Pentium 1 PC, about 10 years ago, I've always doubled the amount of money that I spend on a new PC every two or three years."

That sounds pretty scarrrrry. My first build cost around 60.000 (120.000 with monitor) in local currency, and last year I have build two PC's under 20.000 LCcy. It seems I'm going the oposite way without loosing the same level of performance in each PC's time.
Build years - 1996,2000,2001,2007.

 

[Guest]

I would have loved to see the 4500 dollar pc not overclocked...
I mean, these benchmarks make little sense; ofcourse the expensive one wins every benchmark, that's only obvious.

Rather, the poor overclocker will benefit knowing if his machine would level or outperform the 4500 pc OOB in some fields!
That gives him at least a reason to be proud on how well his OverClocked system holds out against the more expensive versions.
Crysis, I wonder how many people actually run crysis on a $500 machine; I only expect it to perform below average.
Rather it would be more beneficial to find the cheapest system possible maintaining an average of 25fps (20fps minimum) on those games, and then paste a price on it (like 600? 700?)
I mean, who knows one can buy for 120$ more a system that is running crysis on lower graphic levels; with playable framerates...

 

[Crashman]

Comparing an overclocked low-cost processor to a standard speed expensive processor makes the low cost buyer feel good, but it's still cheating. Usually Tom's includes both overclocked and standard speed results, but it must be understood that comparing a non-overclocked high-priced proccessor to an overclocked low-priced processor is for entertainment purposes only.

 

[orangedrink]

[citation][nom]tomasf[/nom]I´d like to see some other game benchmarks besides crysis. lets face it, not every one likes that game an there are some newer games that don´t need that kind of power. some racing games wold be nice.BTW. great systems. the $500 its awesome[/citation]

I totally agree. Crysis runs like crap on my quad 1.8 phenom 4gig ram hd4850, pretty much unplayable. But GRiD on the other hand runs great. Full quality, 1600 x 1050. whatever the highest res my 22" can take...

 

[Guest]

i have the "1,500" PC and the total cost for me was $800 so this whole comparing thing is a joke. What a waste of time, the main point is don't spend over $1,000 and you will have a $3,000 alienware computer for 1/3rd the cost. Also the real reason the $500 lags behind is the 2ghz duo, for $50 more you can have a Quad which is what crysis needs.

 

[orangedrink]

[citation][nom]bob3336666[/nom]i have the "1,500" PC and the total cost for me was $800 so this whole comparing thing is a joke. What a waste of time, the main point is don't spend over $1,000 and you will have a $3,000 alienware computer for 1/3rd the cost. Also the real reason the $500 lags behind is the 2ghz duo, for $50 more you can have a Quad which is what crysis needs.[/citation]

Thats what i was thinking. I would probably lower the hard drive to 250/300 gig.

Can you guys do an "all out" rig. How much and what is the performance if you build a rig with the best of the best...

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]orangedrink[/nom]Can you guys do an "all out" rig. How much and what is the performance if you build a rig with the best of the best...[/citation]

Unfortunately not even Tom's Hardware has access to all the "best of the best" hardware at once. For example, there's a solid state drive on the market that uses PCI-Express x4 and is around 4x as fast as the fastest SATA drive, but the $3000 price is tough to justify and I don't think they're giving away samples.

And then there's a problem of defining "best". As we wait for Core i7, the most powerful desktop solution is the "Skulltrail" or equivalent platform. Yet these perform significantly worse in games than high-end quads.

 

[Draven35]

The $1,500 system again looks like a top value, until one considers that it would take over 16 hours to produce a one-minute animation at 30 frames per second (and only 13 hours for the $4,500 build).

Or, build 9 $500 machines, and it would be done in three and a half hours. Even freelance animators have renderfarms... if you're doing freelance 3d and you blew all your money on a single $4500 system, then you're not going to be able to get the job done as fast as the guy with the nine $500 machines... or a $1500 machine ( to work on) and six $500 render nodes. (and yes, I know that unless you're using a GPU-based renderer, you could knock the nodes down to some cheapie onboard video instead of the 8800... my point still stands.)