System Builder Marathon: $625 Gaming PC
Graphics Card And Hard Drive
Graphics Card: Sapphire 100259L Radeon HD 4870 512 MB
Our quest for higher frame rates led us to this massive reference-clocked Sapphire HD 4870 featuring 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. Its large dual-slot cooler is quiet when in 2D and it did an effective job of ramping up fan speeds to keep the GPU temperatures down. Currently priced at $190, its retail bundle includes two power adapter cables, an HDTV cable, a DVI-to-HDMI adapter, a DVI-to-VGA adapter, an S-Video adapter, and a CrossFire bridge interconnect cable.
Read Customer Reviews of Sapphire's Radeon HD 4870 512 MB
Hard Drive: Samsung SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB
Priced right along with 250-320 GB drives, this 7,200 RPM Samsung has a 16 MB cache buffer and was the only 500 GB drive we could fit into our budget. According to Samsung’s support Web site, this HD501LJ model comes with just a one year parts and labor warranty.
Read Customer Reviews of Samsung's SpinPoint T-Series 500 GB
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xx12amanxx Yeah Games are definatly more GPU bound than CPU bound at this time.But what about the user who decodes? Next month might be a good time to intro the new am3 triple core seeing as its being sodl for around 150$ and has been seen Oced up to 1ghz over stock.Reply -
As I read this review I wonder, why this is only server I know that provides such a throughout testing and evaluation of OC benefit...Reply
*THUMBS UP* -
nerrawg Nice article guys, like how you seem squeeze the value out of the builds, definitely a good choice of build! My only question is one of personal interest, I wonder if disregarding the set price of $625, a crossfire set up of 2 4830s would give more bang for the buck in gaming then 1 4870? Of course as you have shown it would depend on the cpu, I was thinking around 4 Ghz on a dual core and 4 gigs ram. I am wondering because 2 x 4830 can be had for as little as $170-180 now, and thats pretty awesome.Reply -
nerrawg Looking at the "Radeon HD 4830: High-Speed, Cheap CrossFire" article the results look fairly similar to that seen from this build, with maybe some very small gains in Supreme commander and crysis, while World in Conflict appears to due better on this newer january build. However the 4830 CF was on a test bed without an OC'ed cpu and without overclocking the 4830's, hence my curiosity to know if doing this would significantly increase performance and value over the single 4870?Reply -
StupidRabbit great article as always.. but what happened to the international builder marathon?Reply -
jv_acabal $43 difference bang for the buck. How about in the long run? Sure you'll be paying more than 43 bucks for the electricity bill. I think January's build is better. It might be slower than this month's build but is still very playable at most games.Reply -
maxwellsmart_80 Why do you keep building the same system (practically) over and over again?Reply
It would have been awesome to see a system based on the Phenom II X3 "700 Series" at this price point....especially paired w/ the ATI 4830 or 4850. Dont'cha think a 4870 is a tad much for a "$625 system?" - you would have had a "Dragon Platform" - very doable at your price range. You wouldn't have had to do DDR3 either - DDR2 would have worked quite nicely. -
cangelini StupidRabbitgreat article as always.. but what happened to the international builder marathon?Reply
International competition is in edits--almost ready to go live! Interesting results there, too. -
Onus Excellent article. I think this was a good build.Reply
That Rosewill case (and all their cheap ones like it) will take a front mounted 120mm fan. You had $6 left over, so it would have fit in your budget. -
jcknouse THG Staff note:Here are links to each of the four articles in this month’s System Builder Marathon...Reply
I hate being picky...but...
The links aren't imbedded in those 4 article designations at the top of the article, as of the writing of this note.