Buyer's Guide - March 2000

Value Gaming
Once again, the value machine has the same goals as the high-end, but this time we're focused on gaming performance. Lots of RAM is again an important factor, but 3D acceleration and CPU performance are now also critical.

Processor – AMD Athlon 650 - $250
Although it’s a bit slower in games, the Athlon holds a significant advantage in price at similar clock speeds, and for that reason, we’ve chosen an Athlon 650 for our value gaming system.  Throw in a Golden Fingers device and the 650 can easily overclock to somewhere between 700 and 800 MHz. 

For more information on all Athlon processors, read our Athlon 1GHz Review.

Motherboard – EPoX EP-7KXA - $140
If you’re going with an Athlon CPU, the VIA KX133 chipset is clearly the best platform to run it on.  Unfortunately, there’s a lack of good KX133 boards that are also widely available and that has driven price up considerably through good old supply and demand.  The EPoX is the only widely available KX133, so it’s our pick for now, but better KX133 boards are on the way.

For more information, read our EPoX EP-7KXA Review.

Memory – 128MB Mushkin or Corsair PC133 SDRAM - $125
Never underestimate the value of RAM – it needs to be high quality, high speed, and most importantly, you need lots of it.  Not too long ago, 64MB seemed like the maximum amount that you would need, but with prices so low today, 128MB is the real minimum you should accept.

As for the exact brand of memory, we recommend Corsair or Mushkin modules.  We use them in our test systems and have had absolutely no problems with them. 

Video card – Leadtek GeForce 256 DDR Rev. B.  - $270
Even for our value system, we have to go with a GeForce DDR – it’s only about $70 more than an SDR card and the difference in performance at higher resolutions is just too much to pass up.

While the performance of all GeForce DDR cards is within a few percentage points of each other, the Leadtek GeForce 256 DDR Revision B was able to out distance the other cards in our recent roundup in other areas, namely its excellent cooling without a significant increase in price. Thanks to that cooling, we were able to push our evaluation sample up to 160 MHz core clock – the fastest of any GeForce we’ve tested to date. 

If you’re not overclocking, just go with the best deal on a GeForce DDR that you can find – they’re all clocked the same and thus perform within a few percent of each other.

For more information, read our GeForce DDR Roundup and our Leadtek GeForce 256 DDR Rev. B Review.

Monitor – CTX VL950SL - $350
Monitors are one of the few computer components that you can usually hang onto for years to come.  With that in mind, we didn’t want to go with anything smaller than a 19” on our value gaming system – besides, once you’ve gamed on a monitor this big, there’s no going back.

The best deal we could find on a 19” monitor was the CTX VL950SL, which will run you about $350.  It’s a shortneck model that uses the same 0.26 mm dot pitch tube that many of the bigger brands use.