Weekly Buyer's Guide: Overclocking System - April 2004
by Evan Lieb on April 8, 2004 10:47 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Overclocking System Summary
| Hardware | Component | Price |
| CPU & Cooling | AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Mobile (OEM) plus SLK-947U HSF & Vantec Fan | $134 |
| Motherboard | ABIT NF7-S Rev.2 (nForce2 Ultra 400) | $98 |
| Memory | 2 X 256MB Mushkin Level One PC3500 (DDR433) | $145 |
| Video Card | 128MB Gigabyte Radeon 9600 Pro | $135 |
| Monitor | Samsung 955DF DynaFlat CRT | $200 |
| Computer Case | Kingwin K11 Aluminum ATX plus $72 430W Antec PSU | $142 |
| Sound Card | Creative Labs Audigy 2 6.1 (OEM). Or free onboard sound. | $70 |
| Speakers | Logitech Z-640 5.1 surround | $55 |
| Networking | Onboard 10/100 Ethernet or 10/100/1000 Gigabit controller | $0 |
| Hard Drive | Western Digital 800JB (80GB) | $72 |
| CD-RW | Lite-On 52x32x52x16 Combo CD-RW/DVD-ROM | $52 |
| Bottom Line | - | $1103 |
$1103 is the final price of our high end system this week, not including any money that you'll spend on software (Windows XP Home or Professional, Office, etc.) or a keyboard and mouse.
Long-time overclockers are absolutely going to love a setup like this. They'll have quality DDR that they can use for many months, if not years, to come, and will enjoy great performance and stability at the same time. Beginning overclockers should consult our forums for more information on how to overclock, as it can be dangerous for inexperienced users. What we've talked about in this guide may be difficult to understand if you don't have some type of background in modern day overclocking, making AnandTech's forums (or any good online hardware forum, really) the best place for you to ask for building advice.
Now go build your system and let us know what you think in our comments section.
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Jeff7181 - Sunday, April 11, 2004 - link
Oh, and DannyOcean... you say the mobile Athlon XP's only have a 266 Mhz FSB. So what? Mine's running on a 432 Mhz FSB right now... just cause at stock speed they run at 266 Mhz doesn't mean you HAVE to run that at that speed.Jeff7181 - Sunday, April 11, 2004 - link
Muzzy... no, you're not missing something, newegg is... they're wrong if they have it listed at 1.83 Ghz... it's not, it's 133x14 which is 1862 Mhz.DannyOcean - Sunday, April 11, 2004 - link
timebecomes,The mobile Athlon XP's only have a 266 FSB, what's the point?
Evan Lieb,
A Northwood P4C certainly does run faster clock-for-clock, but I would argue that you will not find 2.4C-2.8C P4's (which all clock quite similar) clocking higher on average then a 2.4A Prescott. The 3.0C-3.4C P4's are a differant story, though, and they do clock quite high. They also cost more then $75 over a 2.4A.
timebecomes - Saturday, April 10, 2004 - link
I was just saying that it may drop the price of the existing cards out there such as the 9800 pro that was rated as an alternative at about $200.Evan Lieb - Saturday, April 10, 2004 - link
TrogdorJW,Yeah, I think we'll include an "Alternative" chart next time. As far as your other comments go, I agree to a point that we should include benchmarks. However, this is a still a "guide" and not so much a "review". Certain guides demand testing (mostly just the overclocking ones). Still, we'll give this more consideration. :)
DannyOcean,
The 2.8C is a better overclocking processor and isn't that much more. The 2.4A is slower per clock and draws considerably more power at high overclocks. Plus, the 2.8C actually overclocks better.
timebecomes,
Yes, but you can always say there is something around the corner. Plus, with video cards, sometimes you just never know with a new core how good initial driver support will be, among other early issues that arise with new products.
timebecomes - Saturday, April 10, 2004 - link
May want to also hold off on the vid card if Nvidia and ATI are expected to release new cards in a week or two. It may dump the price of the 9800 pro enough to make it worth it.timebecomes - Saturday, April 10, 2004 - link
Yea... but it only has a 533 FSB...DannyOcean - Friday, April 9, 2004 - link
AnandTech should consider placing the Intel 2.4A (533 FSB) Prescott w/ 1MB L2 Cache CPU as an Intel alternative to the Mobile Athlons. The 2.4A (not to be confused with the earlier 2.4A that had a 400MHz FSB) has shown excellant overclocking headroom for a $150 Intel CPU. With decent air or water cooling it's capable of reaching 800 FSB (200MHz x 18 for a 3.6GHz overal speed). It's costs less then a 2.4C and offers a high multiplier that allows users to use low-latency DDR400 without needing a 5:4 or 3:2 ratio.TrogdorJW - Friday, April 9, 2004 - link
#11 - and also to Evan and the rest of the AT crew....What we really need are the *benchmarks* from these systems. What many people fail to understand is that an Athlon XP at 2.5 GHz is much faster than the Athlon XP 3200+. I would wager that the overall performance of the AXP 2.5 GHz is going to be the same if not better than the A64 3000+ (2.0 GHz and 512K cache). In fact, the 1 MB of cache on the A64 3200+ really only helps a few applications, so AXP 2.5 GHz could very likely equal that as well.
So when are we going to get a set of benchmarks for all of the systems that are being recommended in the Buyers' Guides? I'm thinking that a five week cycle would be nice, unless you can just put the benchmarks into a chart for all the systems. Ideally, what you would have would be one set of pages that would automatically update with all the latest results from each of the systems. That would be pretty slick. Put a link to that in each guide, and we could just go check out the results for the current "recommended configurations". I for one am very curious to see how the OC system compares to the high-end system!
And if it's not too much to ask, how about the total cost of the "Alternative" configurations? The "Alternative" is almost always higher performance, I think, so just have two tables at the end of the articles, one with the recommended setup, and one with the alternative. (And include the alternative setups in the benchmarks, if those are ever done.)
Wow, I'm such a demanding twit. Sorry. Great job on these guides, though!
pgx - Thursday, April 8, 2004 - link
i don't understand the why anyone would want to oc currently to save money unless i'm missing something. a 3000+ amd 64 is only just a bit more($90) but it is guaranteed to work. the savings in ocing just doesn't seem to be very good when compared to the added risk. instead of the system listed you could get an amd 64 3000+ w/ 1GB 3200 ram, and basically similar quality components for practically the same price. you could even oc it a little for even more performance.