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the

magnif icent seven

A

nyone can build a great gaming rig with an unlim-

ited budget, but what if there’s a hard cap on the

cubits that can be spent? We posed just such a

challenge to seven leading system vendors, asking them

to build the fastest gaming machines they could muster for

a truly affordable $2,500.

Custom paint jobs? Quad videocards? Terabytes of

storage? Not here, buddy. Those high-end luxuries go

out the window, and vendors are forced to make tough

choices—robbing the motherboard to pay the videocard,

so to speak. Indeed, in many ways, building a $2,500 con-

fi g is more diffi cult than building the ultimate gaming rig,

where you just grab the fastest parts available. In this chal-

lenge, vendors had to really weigh the cost and benefi ts of

every single part. Core 2 or Athlon 64? If you run the Core

2 Extreme, can you afford dual videocards? Does RAID

break the bank? Does a soundcard earn its keep? Is 2GB

of RAM really necessary?

These are the questions we expected the vendors to

gnash their teeth over as they tried to outfox their com-

petitors. No matter what, we had modest expectations of

their cash-strapped creations. And yet this cohort con-

tains some pleasantly surprising confi gs. Read on to fi nd

out just how much computer you can get for $2,500.

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icent seven

Can these seven midrange

PCs restore dignity to the

common man’s gaming

experience?

The system’s reviewed in this roundup will be available at each vendor’s website beginning November 1, at the published price.

DECEMBER 2006 MAXIMUMPC 25