Hardware Recommendations for June 2008

June 7th, 2008 at 16:50 under Articles, Hardware.

I believe it’s been a lengthy 5 months since I’ve slapped together one of these guides. I’d say I’m a bit overdue, so here we go.

Upcoming Launches

Naturally no matter what time of year I write this, there are always upcoming product launches. This time around Nvidia and AMD are in the final steps of launching their competing video cards. For non-gamers these launches won’t bring a whole lot to the industry but for gamers this launch is rather huge. Neither AMD or Nvidia have brought out a substantial GPU core since the launch of the 8800GTX and HD2900XT more than a year ago. I say this as the G92 core in all current Nvidia performance GPUs is essentially a shrunk G80(8800GTX) core and the RV670 core in AMD’s HD38xx series GPUs is a shrunk R600(HD2900XT) core. These upcoming cores in the 260/280GTX and HD4850/4870 should bring enormous performance jumps, something worthy of upgrading to. So with my recommendations, keep this in mind when I mention GPUs.

Budget Office Machine

Keeping with the trend of less is more(money in your pocket?), this build has your bare essentials for an office PC. The parts in this build haven’t changed much since the last iteration. I did however drop in a dual-core Celeron as it cost $6 more for double the cores. Everything else is nearly identical and even cheaper than before. This build is about as cheap as it gets before turning to integrated boards. The next iteration may actually be built around an integrated ITX motherboard if prices continue to drop.

Total: $321

Budget Gaming Machine

This box is a step up from the Budget Office Machine and will give you the chance to frag your friends while on a budget. I’d consider this to be the console version of a compute meant for gaming at 1280×1024 with maxed out details or higher resolutions with some compromises. This would also be a great entry-level overclocking machine with plenty of leeway left in the components for some massive overclocking.

Total: $765

Advanced Gaming Machine

Have that need for speed but it’s tempered by your wallet? This setup would be sufficient for gaming at the highest resolutions while keeping the budget within acceptable levels. I’ve chosen a high speed dualcore processor versus a medium speed as we currently have 1 title that scales to 4 cores and not many coming up on the roadmap that will utilize all 4 cores. When you factor in overclocking, which is a given with these builds, the dualcore stomps the quadcore in everything but 3DMark 2006, which is heavily biased towards quads.

Total: $1323

Gotta Have It

I would consider this build more of a tech demo rather than a useful computer. I say this as frankly it’s overkill but for very select users and applications. With the upcoming GPU launches I’d be very hesitant of purchasing the GPUs in this build due to their eminent obsoleteness. Once again I’ve selected a dualcore processor as it’s a much better choice in nearly every case. I personally would trade my QX9650 for an E8500 if I wasn’t going to lose so much value.

Total: $3329

Conclusion

There you have it. If you are making an important GPU purchase soon I’d highly suggest waiting out for upcoming Nvidia and AMD graphics card launches. I didn’t mention the Intel P45 chipset as frankly there weren’t any P45 boards available at the time that could compete in any of the price segments. Something between the Budget Gaming and Advanced Gaming machine would work once P45 board availability increases. Feel free to ask me any questions you have either via my contact form or in the comments below. As always, if you have a suggestion please pipe up, I might have overlooked something.

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