High-end System
This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.
Athlon 64 3200+ – Our review
| The Athlon 64 3200+ processor is the next best thing to owning of the FX processors. The 3200+ is still an AMD64 compatible CPU, but is running on a single channel memory controller in a 754-pin socket. It still is more than capable of beating the Pentium 4 and Athlon XP line of processors for gaming and most other benchmarks as well. |
MSI K8T Neo FISR2 – Our review
| This was by far my most difficult choice in the entire buying guide. There are several very good Athlon 64 motherboards that we have reviewed, including the Abit KV8-MAX3 and the Asus KV8 Deluxe boards, also based on the VIA K8T800 chipset as is our MSI motherboard. I would highly recommend you look at our reviews of these boards (Abit review, Asus review, MSI review) before picking the board for you. |
Corsair 1GB XMS3200 Pro
| Again we are going with Corsair for our memory of choice on the high-end gaming system. Since we are no longer using a processor that requires us to use registered memory, we can get some faster memory that will allow you to overclock the memory bus a bit more, and you can get some nice LED lights on the modules as well. 🙂 |
ATI Radeon 9600XT – Our review
| The Radeon 9600XT graphics card just barely beat out the NVIDIA 5700 Ultra for our mainstream video recommendation, and as there is a three hundred dollar difference between the 9600XT and the 9800XT, I decided to use the mid-range ATI card in our gaming system here. It still delivers a great gaming experience to you, just with a much lower price tag. Also, the NVIDIA 5700 Ultra would be a suitable replacement here as well. |
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 PCI
| Again if we are looking at a gaming platform, you are going to want decent audio. There is a chance that, depending on the motherboard you decide to buy, that you’re on-board audio solution will be enough to handle your gaming needs. If it is not, then the bare bones Audigy 2 solution is for you. |
Western Digital 200GB Caviar
| For the price, this Western Digital drives is one of the better deals in the computer market today. You get all the space you’ll need for lots of game installs, and still have the fastest IDE performance you can get with the 8 MB buffer on these drives. |
