I love a good challenge. I wrote up how to shop for a sub-$1000 gaming machine a few days ago, and was pretty happy with the results. While reading my feeds this morning, an article by ExtremeTech came through on my del.icio.us popular feed that was similar to mine, except with an $800 price tag. Let’s see if we can use some of the methods I talked about with my $1000 rig to beat theirs

Time for the cage, er, case-match. Here are the rules, as they laid them out in their article :

  • The final price was $805, with an OS, mouse, keyboard and DVD drive.
  • “The stuff we recommend has to be readily available, in stock, at online vendors we would trust with our own money. We don’t just go with the lowest price we can find anywhere in the wild land of online commerce. Prices tend to fluctuate and we’re sure that you can find a better deal if you dig around enough—we’d rather err on the side of “you can actually find these prices” than promise a less expensive system you could never build yourself.” OK.
  • “do-it-yourselfers looking to build a computer under $1,000 are recycling monitors and speakers from other machines, so you don’t see them on that list.” Agreed.

First of all, let’s see what they’re bringing to the party. Here are their components, and some pertinent information about each, my notes in brackets:

  • Athlon 64 3000+ (Socket 939) [1000mhz ht fsb (200mhzx5), 512 L2, 1.8Ghz]
  • eVGA nForce4 SLI (133-K8-NF41) [SLI, 1000mhz ht fsb, ddr400, 2xPCIe16, 8-channel audio, Gbit NIC, 24-pin]
  • Corsair ValueSelect DDR400 (2×512) [cas 2.5, 200mhzx2]
  • eVGA GeForce 7600 GT CO [580/1500mhz, 12 pipelines, PCIe16, 256MB, 128-bit]
  • Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Value
  • Seagate 7200.7 160GB [SATA, no NCQ]
  • Pioneer DVR-111DBK [40x/16x/8x CD/DVD/DVD-R burner]
  • Antec Sonata II (includes 450W power supply) [1x120mm, link ]
  • Windows XP Home [ouch. They were sold out of WinME?]
  • Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000
  • Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical

I don’t claim to be an expert, but let’s see if we can improve on this machine. Let’s address the obvious stuff first:

  • The processor and the northbridge are matched up well bus-speed wise, and the nVidia nForce4 rocks, so no money wasted there.
  • The processor has 512KB L2, ok, but not ideal
  • The Athlon 64 has an integrated memory controller that is good for an extra 120ms or so, compared to previous athlons and the P4. Good.
  • If you’re going to assume that someone is re-using their monitor, you can assume they’re going to re-use the keyboard. Some people still have a ball-mouse, so I’ll upgrade to an optical…
  • A budget gaming machine doesn’t need a burner or a fancy case. It needs a DVD reader and airflow.

In addition, HyperTransport isn’t needed in a gaming machine. Even lowering it down to 20% (200mhz) of its speed has near-zero impact on game frame rates. In fact, this transport bus isn’t very busy at all in a budget gaming machine, unless the channel gets flooded simultaneously by a dual-graphics-card SLI setup, maxed-out gigabit ethernet and RAID.

Along these lines, we can rule out the need for a sound card on a HyperTransport system, since the onboard audio won’t be stressed by bandwidth problems. If the motherboard is made by any quality manufacturer, the on-board 8-channel audio should be more than enough. While you’re at it, you can’t assume someone will have 4 speakers laying around…2, maybe. To use that surround sound, you could pick up the speakers, but I’ve used and highly recommend surround-sound headphones. Nothing makes you jump more than when you hear that CounterStrike sniper rifle from your rear-right, and hear the ricochet from the sparks in front of you. (bunny-hop, bunny-hop!)

OK, so going with my new best friend, the overclocked Pentium D 805, let’s see what we come up with…

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