Squeezing Out More For Less
The Age
Thursday March 11, 2004
Faster, stronger . . . we have the technology. Livewire's quarterly PC review finds a workhorse for less money.
IT WOULD have been surprising - but how thrillingly novel - if Bleeding Edge had been able to begin another year of our quarterly specifications for a good workhorse PC without having to wade through a swamp of new acronyms and technologies.
Alas, we have gathered up our hopes that buying and understanding PCs would one day become simple, stuffed them in a Cryovac bag and stuck them in the freezer drawer.
This year you are going to have to come to terms with Prescott - the latest upgrade to Intel's Pentium 4 CPU technology. But in the interests of retaining our reader's mental equilibrium, Bleeding Edge is going to trouble you with only one concept: Prescott has double the Level 2 cache memory area of previous Pentium 4 chips, which means the processor spends less time waiting around.
Prescott technology will make it easier for Intel chips to reach clock speeds of 4GHz.
Our thinking is that since Prescott does not cost any more, and it will allow you to feel superior to those unfortunate people who bought their PCs before Mr Prescott - whoever he is - arrived, why not have one?
The first Prescott chip - the 2800E - runs at 2.8GHz, compared to 2.6GHz for the 2600C (with half the cache) we recommended last time around and, at $255, it costs $20 less.
One complication introduced by Prescott is that only the new range of motherboards can handle the higher voltage that this technology requires, so make sure that whatever you buy is Prescott-compatible.
Our basic motherboard choice is still an Asus model - this time the new P4P800S-SE, which accommodates Prescott and gives you onboard LAN for just $92. That represents good value because it uses the Intel 848P chipset, rather than the cheaper SIS chipset, and includes an 800MHz front-side bus, six-channel audio and digital S/PIDF audio out.
If you can afford a little more, and would like some extra goodies, Gigabyte's 8IP1000 Pro 2, with the more powerful Intel 865PE chipset and features such as gigabit Ethernet, and six USB 2.0 and two Firewire ports, may be worth considering at $147.
Prescott's extra voltage means more heat, so unless you can find a case with an additional cooling fan, you would be wise to allocate another $10 or so for an extra fan.
The price of RAM continues to fall, but the problems that beset the faster 400DDR chips still have not been sorted out entirely. Hyundai and Samsung seem to be the two manufacturers producing the least-troublesome chips at that speed.
At $110 for 512MB of 400DDR, Hyundai - being slightly cheaper than Samsung - is our choice if you must have 400DDR. It is by no means necessary for the average user, however, so we recommend 512MB of Hyundai DDR333 RAM, at $102.
This month, the key phrase in video cards is ``8x AGP" - a faster version of the Advanced Graphics Port - which offers more realistic 3D graphics for games and is useful for digital content editing. For the average user, we recommend the 128MB ATi Radeon 9200SE card from Gigabyte, at $80.
These days more people want to run two monitors. For that you need a dual-head card. Gigabyte's ATi Radeon 9600 has that facility for $145, although if you are mainly using office illustrations, rather than games, and want to avoid eye strain, think about the Matrox Millenium P650, at about $375.
Gamers will probably want the Gigabyte ATI Radeon 9600XT, which at $263 is much more impressive than nVidia's high-end offerings.
A pair of acronyms that trouble some video card buyers are W/TV and VIVO. W/TV normally means ``With TV out", which lets you connect the computer to a TV through an S-Video or composite cable. We have never had much luck getting a good picture via TV out, largely because of different resolutions and refresh rates. A better option is to buy a TV with a VGA input.
VIVO (video in, video out) allows you to bring video into the PC, as well as beaming it to the world. It is a good budget solution, but a dedicated capture card will give you better results.
The price of hard drive storage continues to fall, so this time we are recommending 120GB, rather than 80GB. It seems a lot, but with digital music, photography and video becoming more widespread, you will be amazed at how quickly it fills up. Serial ATA drives have some advantages over the ATA specification that we have recommended in the past - among them the fact that their narrow cables allow better ventilation. Now that the serial interface is built into motherboards, we think it is time to upgrade to the new standard.
Seagate drives are slightly slower than Western Digital but a little more reliable, largely because they are better packaged. If you have your system assembled - and we allow $70 in the price for that - we would recommend the 120GB Western Digital Serial ATA drive, at $148.
We still have not seen anything that surpasses LG's F700B Flatron Monitor, which is slightly cheaper now at $193.
The DVD-ROM standard has moved from 4x to 8x, and although it is slightly more expensive, we recommend the Pioneer 107D at $229.
Microsoft has a bundled offering for its optical mouse and keyboard, which at $45 is hard to go past.
Charles Wright appears regularly in Tuesday's Next section. He can be
contacted at cw@bleedingedge.com.au
BLEEDING EDGE'S BEST BUY PC LAST QUARTER PRICE THIS QUARTER PRICE CPU Intel P42600c $275 Intel P4 2800E $255 Motherboard Asus P4S800-LAN $90 Asus P4S800S-FE $92 Memory 512MB Samsung DDR333 $120 512MB Hyundai DDE333 $102 Video Sapphire 128MB Radeon 9200 $82 Gigabyte 8x AGP ATi Radeon 9200SE $80 HD Seagate 7200rpm 80GB ATA $99 Western Digital 120GB SATA $148 Monitor LG Flatron 17-inch F700B $220 $193 Floppy $15 $15 Keybd/Mouse Microsoft (optical) $40 $45 Pioneer 4x DVD Writer $212 Pioneer 1070 8x $229 Case $55 $65 Assembly $70 $70 TOTAL $1278 $1294
© 2004 The Age
Share This