OCTOBER 2005 MA XIMUMPC 49
Naturally, anyone who’s building or upgrading
should ask themselves what they want to do with
their PC and how much moolah they want to spend.
We wanted a budget box capable of playing today’s
games at reasonable resolutions and managing
multiple open applications without choking. We also
wanted a machine that would still feel competent in
12 or 24 months, with room to grow from there.
Our fi rst thought was to use AMD’s newly
announced Sempron 3400+. With its 64-bit
capability and 2GHz clock for a mere $140, it’s
a hell of a deal. Unfortunately, the Sempron is
limited to a Socket 754 mobo. We haven’t seen
SLI in any S754 boards, and dual-core is limited
to the Socket 939 interface. In the end, we went
with the 90nm version of the Athlon 64 3000+.
Is the 2GHz Sempron faster than the 1.8GHz
Athlon 64? In some apps, probably. In other
apps, the Athlon 64’s dual-channel RAM and
larger cache (512KB in the A64 vs. 256KB in the
Sempron) give it the edge. More importantly, the
Socket 939 platform gives us plenty of upgrade
options. The Athlon 64 FX-57 and the Athlon 64
X2 4800+ both set you back $1,000 today, for
example, but in a year, we can guarantee that the
prices for each will be considerably lower. You’ll
be able to sell your 3000+ to a needy chump and
put an FX or X2 into the MSI K8N board.
Using the K8N Neo4/SLI had a huge impact
on our videocard choice. Initially we were goingto use ATI’s Radeon X800 XL card, which is
slightly cheaper and a tick faster than its nVidia
counterpart. It was a done deal until we realized
we wanted a dual-card option down the road.
Because ATI’s CrossFire is still nothing but
promises, we booted the X800 XL for an nVidia
GeForce 6800 GT.
Not that the 6800 GT is a bad card; in fact,
it’s pretty close to the X800 XL. And with two
6800 GTs paired in SLI, there’s no comparison.
So where does the Lean Machine stand in
performance? Not bad, all things considered.
We knew our single 6800 GT couldn’t stand up
against two 6800 Ultras, but it still fared well—
just don’t expect to run Doom 3 at 1920x1200
on your fl at panel with 4x AA turned on. We
also give up 30 percent in clock speed and half
the L2 cache with our 1.8GHz Athlon 64 3000+
versus the 2.66GHz FX-55 in our zero-point
machine. As a result, we lose between 20 and 30
percent in performance in the CPU-bound tests.
Considering that the Athlon 64 FX-55 costs
about $800 while the 3000+ cost $160... well,
that says it all.
And this is what it’s really about: price. Just
the two 6800 Ultras in our zero-point machine
cost as much as the entire Lean Machine. For
that matter, just a single CPU from this year’s
Dream Machine costs as much as the entire
Lean Machine. One CPU! Such is life.WALKING THE TIGHTROPE BETWEEN PRICE AND PERFORMANCE
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SYS mark ZERO POINT SCORESPremiere Pro sec
Photoshop #S sec
DivX Encode sec
D -ark . fps
Doom . fps0 2 0 % 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Our zero-point reference systems uses a 2.6GHz Athlon 64 FX-55, 2GB of DDR400 Crucial Ballistix RAM, two nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra cards in SLI, a
Maxtor 250GB DiamondMax10, a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS, a PC Power and Cooling TurboCool 510 Deluxe Express, and Windows XP Pro with SP2.THE BENCHMARKS