General Gaming Article |
- No BS Podcast #210: Ballmer's Retirement, Nvidia Shield and Netgear takes Asus to Court
- Cheap Desktop Computer Battle
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti Graphics Card Could Launch by End of Year
- CyberPowerPC Touts ZeusBook Ultimate as World's Slimmest 17-inch Gaming Notebook
- Western Digital Acquires Enterprise Flash Storage Provider Virident for $685 Million
- Seagate Notches 1 Million Shingled Magnetic Recording Drive Shipments, Eyes 20TB HDDs by 2020
- IT Solutions Provider Arkoon Vows Support for Windows XP After Microsoft's April 2014 Deadline
- Newegg Daily Deals: XCOM: Enemy Unknown on the Cheap!
| No BS Podcast #210: Ballmer's Retirement, Nvidia Shield and Netgear takes Asus to Court Posted: 09 Sep 2013 03:45 PM PDT
Ballmer's Retirement, Nvidia Shield, and Netgear takes Asus to Court.It's time for episode #210 of the No BS Podcast, and this time we kicked things off by discussing Steve Ballmer's retirement as the CEO of Microsoft. Next Online Managing Editor Jimmy Thang shares his hands-on experience with Nvidia's Sheild, and we discuss the lawsuit between Netgear and Asus while pondering if we could ever quit the Internet. To wrap things up we handled some reader questions, and each editor delivered his or her editor's picks. Gordon was on vacation this week so he was unable to deliver his traditional rant, but he's at IDF this week so we're sure he'll have plenty of material when we convene next time. As always each editor shared their Editor Picks. Katherine Stevenson: Fooducate Jimmy Thang: RunKeeper Tom McNamara: Borderlands 2 Josh Norem: Down For Everyone or Just Me, Sennheiser CX200 Earbuds
If you have any feedback or questions feel free to: Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or Leave us a voicemail at 877-404-1337 x1337 Thanks for listening! We Wouldn't be here without all of your support! Subscribe to Maximum PC in Print or on Google Play, itunes, Kindle, Nook and Zinio. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and follow our RSS feed Thanks for listening! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 09 Sep 2013 12:52 PM PDT Battle of the $750 budget PCsWe've always said that building on a budget takes far more skill and savvy than building without financial constraints. Every single component choice has to be carefully weighed for its potential benefits and drawbacks. As if that weren't enough, budget builders have to decide between three prospective platforms: Intel's LGA1155, and AMD's AM3+ and FM2. With so many permutations possible, and so much room for error, a cash-strapped builder's got to wonder which thrifty path offers the best all-around performance. We can think of no better way to answer this important question than with a down-and-dirty DIY dust-up.
Three Maximum PC editors duke it out to build the best cheap computer. Yes, we set three staffers loose in the Lab to battle it out build-it style. For ground rules, each was assigned one of the three competing platforms and given a hard limit of $750. Since prices shift from day to day, or even hour to hour, all of the competing configurations were priced with the popular PCPartPicker.com tool and the specs were all finalized at 6:00 p.m. of the same day. Since rebates also change daily, they weren't factored into the total cost. Editors were allowed the freedom of using personal knowledge and the Internets to inform their picks, but since many of the components used in these builds aren't typically on our "enthusiast" radar, none of the editors really knew for certain if one part was faster than another. And like most buyers screwing together parts from a shopping list, they didn't know if everything would actually work together in the end, either. You must be dying to know how this all plays out, how the builds perform in the benchmarks against each other as well as against our house Budget box (Blueprint), and which of the budget builds gets the ultimate nod from our panel of judges. The contestants have their tools drawn, so let the battle begin!
FM2 Build: Choose Your BattleCan a GTX 670 ride this rig all the way to victory? Chris Zele's PlanI was given the task of creating an AMD FM2 system, so my initial plan was to build a hybrid CrossFire AMD A10-5800K box, leveraging the integrated graphics to assist a discrete GPU in graphics chores. I planned to use the quad-core part coupled with a Radeon HD 6670 and overclock them both. That whole plan went out the window, though, when I learned that Tom and Gordon were going to use GPUs that were far faster than a hybrid CrossFire setup. I had to zig instead of zag, so I decided to go for broke on the graphics side, spending half my budget on the GPU. I had to rob Peter to pay Paul, so my quad-core A10-5800K was swapped out for a dual-core A6-5400K. This might seem foolish, but it was a calculated risk. Both of my competitors have CPU platforms with chip options far faster than FM2. The Piledriver cores in FM2 CPUs can't really compete with six-core FX chips or any LGA1155 quad part, so I conceded the CPU tests. I figured that if I was going to lose in CPU benchmarks I may as well try to win all of the GPU benchmarks. I just hoped that the A6-5400K I selected wouldn't hold back the video card's performance too much. After Gordon saw my build, he dubbed it the "Scud Missile," as it had a bunch of low-end parts flanked by a kick-ass GPU. The CPU and CoolerThis is a category where FM2 can be easily outclassed by the other two sockets. On the AM3+ build, Tom could scale all the way up to eight cores. And since both the FM2 and AM3+ parts use the same Piledriver cores on the latest CPUs, there's just no way to beat the FX-6300 CPU in Tom's rig. I knew if I wanted to win any of the benchmark rounds I would have to downgrade my CPU to a dual-core A6 5400K. I considered an overclock but settled on the stock cooler. The best part is it's free and I saw no point in overclocking my wimpy dual-core—it still wouldn't win any computing chores. The AMD 5400K comes with a stock clock of 3.6GHz and a Turbo Boost of 3.8GHz, which I thought would be more than enough for some of our GPU-heavy benchmarks. Parts list
The MotherboardDespite its budget persona, the FM2 platform actually offers some very nicely outfitted dual-GPU motherboards. My build, though, would have none of that. I wanted to save money for my other parts, which is why I picked a budget microATX board: MSI's FM2-A55M-E33. The inexpensive mobo comes with four SATA ports, one x16 PCIe slot, and four USB 2.0 ports. Yup, no USB 3.0. The board has two DIMM slots but they support up to 16GB of DDR3/1866. It may be basic, but at least it's only $49. RAMMy FM2 box needed to make up ground wherever possible, so as a result, I went with a pair of Kingston Black 4GB DDR3/1600 modules for $37. I hoped that by having slightly faster RAM and more of it I would get a small edge in performance against Gordon and Tom, as they both chose lesser amounts of 1,333MHz RAM. Tom's box is even running in single-channel mode, too. The GPUAfter Tom and Gordon revealed their respective plans for the beefier Radeon HD 7870 and GeForce GTX 660 boards, I knew I had to get something that would trounce them in performance. I decided to go with a GeForce GTX 670 from MSI, which would easily outperform the GPUs they selected. With a strong GPU to counter-balance my low-end processor, my goal was to win out on the gaming benchmarks, as half of the benchmarks we chose to determine performance were GPU-based. The CaseFor my case, I wanted something that would give me tool-less drive bays, cable-routing accommodations, and a clean design, all for $50. As luck would have it, the Corsair 200R was on sale for that price. The 200R offers everything I was after, plus sports two fans along with front-panel USB 3.0 ports. Sadly, my mobo doesn't support USB 3.0, but I could still make use of the ports using the USB 2.0–to–USB 3.0 adapter that came with the case. The StorageMy primary storage for this build was a HGST 7,200rpm 500GB mechanical hard drive. I decided to forgo an SSD because it would blow out my budget. I also figured an SSD wasn't imperative with Windows 8, which is very quick and responsive even on mechanical hard drives. The PSULike Gordon, I gambled a little on my PSU choice. The GeForce GTX 670 needs dual 6-pin connectors to power up. As my Corsair CX430 V2 has only one 6-pin, I had to use a Molex-to-6-pin adapter to power my GPU, and I wasn't 100 percent certain it would work. Luckily for me, it did, and I had no problems using the adapter. Yes, I took a chance with the PSU, but not like Gordon who opted for a "free" PSU with a warranty period shorter than the expiration of a gallon of milk—30 days. That doesn't exactly inspire confidence. My CX430 V2 does, though. It has a 3-year warranty and I'm pretty certain it'll handle the 170-watt needs of the MSI GTX 670 card.
The BenchmarksDespite my best efforts, my rig got the crap kicked out of it in the benchmarks. It was like a ragdoll being ripped to shreds by rabid pit bulls. Yeah, not pretty. And I'm not just talking about the two other builds in this competition, either. The A6-5400K couldn't even hang in some CPU-bound tests with the Phenom II X4 965 from our Budget Blueprint. But hey, we're talking a dual-core with shared resources versus a quad-core with four actual separate cores. What's interesting is how much better the Piledriver cores are over the Phenom II in some encoding tests. The little A6-5400K actually beat the Phenom II X4 in ProShow Producer, which is optimized for four threads. (Encoding has long been a weakness in the old Phenom II.) I'm also surprised the A6 did as well against the Phenom II 965 in Stitch.Efx 2.0 and x264 encoding. The results may look ugly, but remember, it's only a dual-core and it even shares resources, too. In gaming, the GeForce GTX 670 easily made mincemeat pie out of the Radeon HD 7770 card in the Budget build, but that's to be expected. Unfortunately, that card didn't give me the advantage I was counting on against Tom and Gordon's builds. Benchmarks
Our current Budget build uses a Phenom II X4 965 BE, a Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3, 4GB of DDR3/1333, an Asus Radeon HD 7770, a 120GB Samsung 840, and WD Caviar Blue 1TB HDD. All tests were run on Windows 8.
AM3+ Build: A Hex on the CompetitionMade from parts you'd actually want to buy |
| CPU | AMD 3.5GHz FX-6300 | www.amd.com | $130 |
| Cooler | Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo | www.coolermaster.com | $33 |
| Motherboard | ASRock 970 Extreme3 | www.asrock.com | $85 |
| RAM | Kingston Value 4GB DDR3/1333 | www.kingston.com | $19 |
| HDD | WD Caviar Blue 500GB | www.wd.com | $55 |
| GPU | MSI Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition | www.amd.com | $230 |
| Case | NZXT 210 Elite | www.nzxt.com | $50 |
| PSU | Corsair CX500 | www.corsair.com | $58 |
| OS | Windows 8 | www.microsoft.com | $90 |
| Total | $750 |
The Motherboard
I chose ASRock's 970 Extreme3 primarily for two reasons. One, it's one of the cheapest motherboards you can get that has heatsinks on the voltage regulator modules. This feature is critical for overclocking and recommended for general stability. Two, it has four RAM slots thanks to its full ATX form factor. So although there's 4GB in there now, you can easily have up to 16GB without having to swap anything. And it'll take up to 32GB clocked up to 2,100MHz; both features are actually pretty handy for encoding HD video. Its additional PCI Express Slot, five SATA 6Gb/s ports, eSATA, UEFI BIOS, optical and coaxial audio, and Japanese-manufactured capacitors are just gravy, in my opinion.
The RAM
Yes, it would have been nice to have 8GB of RAM, or even two 2GB sticks to at least have dual channels. But both options carried a premium that would have busted my budget. Such is the price of including high-quality parts elsewhere. In fact, the day after we ordered our parts, the price of DDR3 began to creep up across the board, so we dodged that bullet. At least I have a common 1,333MHz stick branded by Kingston, so getting a genuinely matching stick later on should not be too difficult.
The Storage
I took the most conservative option here. I thought that an SSD worth buying wasn't really in the cards, and I could do without an optical drive. It's going to cost me some performance, but I was determined to have uniformly recommendable parts in my build. Since Windows can be installed from a USB stick, and there isn't much else that truly requires an optical drive, I didn't feel too bad about my decision, even if it meant having fewer lasers involved.
The GPU
Since I'd already gone AMD with the CPU, I liked the idea of sticking with the brand for my video card. And the MSI Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition is no slouch. It will perform roughly the same as Gordon's
Nvidia GTX 660. I also overclocked the core to 1,100MHz and the memory to 1,400MHz.
The Case
The NZXT 210 Elite has a front USB 3.0 port, lots of room for long video cards, a painted interior, tool-free drive cages, two bundled fans (12cm and 14cm), a bottom PSU mount with external ventilation, and seven fan mounts. It's the kind of product that you can keep between builds, rather than donating it to someone or stowing it in a basement. Being able to use a case like this multiple times offsets its higher cost in the long run. Like the power supply, its benefits will not be reflected in the benchmarks. Like Gordon's caching SSD, it's a thing you have to see and feel firsthand to appreciate. Once you've assembled a computer with a solid case like this one, it's hard to go back to a generic box.
The PSU
This was the other half of what I sacrificed for. The Corsair CX500 might not be the flashiest unit in its class, but with 80-Plus Bronze efficiency, a single 12-volt rail, two 8-pin PCIe cables, a thermally controlled fan, sleeved cables, and a respectable 3-year warranty, it's also the kind of product you can use with confidence for several years of moderate-to-heavy usage. I would have preferred a modular unit, but the 210 Elite has enough room for me to tuck the extra cables out of the way.
The Benchmarks
The zero-point's Phenom II X4 965 can't keep up with a modern hexa-core CPU. But the Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition makes by far the biggest difference versus a Radeon HD 7770, with its greater bandwidth, additional video memory and shaders, and higher clock speeds. These two cards are more like cousins than siblings. Overclock the FX-6300 to 4GHz, and the difference in overall system speed becomes even more apparent; we dominate in every game benchmark and rock the multithreaded apps for good measure. The zero-point's Samsung 840 solid-state drive will make the desktop experience feel much snappier overall, but the expense of this storage device clearly doesn't end at the cash register, as that system sacrifices GPU and CPU horsepower to stay within budget.
| Zero-point | ||
| Stitch.Efx 2.0 (sec) | 1,813 | 1,640 |
| ProShow Producer 5.0 (sec) | 3,127 | 1,950 |
| x264 HD 5.0 (fps) | 8 | 11.4 |
| STALKER: CoP (fps) | 29.9 | 54.9 |
| Hitman: Absolution (fps) | 14 | 28 |
| 3DMark 11 Performance | 3,983 | 6,671 |
Our current Budget build uses a Phenom II X4 965 BE, a Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3, 4GB of DDR3/1333, an Asus Radeon HD 7770, a 120GB Samsung 840, and WD Caviar Blue 1TB HDD. All tests were run on Windows 8.
LGA1155 Build: Quad-Core Curveball
Intel parts can't compete on price, or can they?
Gordon Ung's Plan
Once I was assigned with building a budget box around LGA1155, I originally sketched out a sedate dual-core Ivy Bridge machine (Core i3 or Pentium G) using the Corsair Carbide 200R, upgradeable motherboard, and a quality PSU. Yes, the Honda Civic of budget boxes. It gets your computing done in a reliable and boring fashion. In a drag race of budget rigs, though, and up against overclocked FX and A-series chips with more cores, I don't believe a non-overclocking i3 has what it takes. But to even get into an overclocking part for Intel breaks my budget, too, so I figured there was no way LGA1155 could possibly win at $750 with OS. Once I sat down and started running the numbers, though, I decided I didn't want to go down without a fight. And to quote Admiral James Tiberius Kirk, "I don't like to lose."
But would my curveball strategy really upstage the other rigs with their cost advantage, or would I be marooned for an eternity on dead, nonfunctional PC island? In essence, buried alive. Buried alive.
The CPU and Cooler
Rather than a predictable dual-core CPU, I decided to bet the farm that a quad-core Ivy Bridge part would give me an advantage over the overclocked A-series and FX chips I expected to face. For that, I turned to the Core i5-3350P. This 22nm CPU is a full-on quad-core Ivy Bridge part. It lacks Hyper-Threading but has a mild Turbo Boost mode. There's a modest overclock available but as a non-K part, it ain't much, and only on Z-series chipsets. The Core i5-3350P graphics core is disabled but it's actually 100MHz faster than the pricier Core i5-3330. Besides the clocks, spec-for-spec it's the same as the Core i5-3570K. The chip comes with a stock cooler that's not horrible, either, with its copper slug.
I think this highlights a weakness in Intel's lineup: There's no unlocked part to be had for less than $200. Ideally, I would have used a modern version of the old Core i5-655K chip.
Could I have sacrificed a couple of the other "luxuries" in the rig to get a Core i5-3570K and cheap cooler, so I could overclock, too? Perhaps, but I thought going that far would seriously compromise the machine beyond actual usefulness.
| CPU | Intel 3.1GHz Core i5-3350P | www.intel.com | $176 |
| Motherboard | ECS H77H2-M3 | www.ecsusa.com | $65 |
| RAM | Kingston Value 4GB DDR3/1333 | www.kingston.com | $26 |
| ODD | Lite-On iHas IHAS 124-04 | www.liteonit.com | $16 |
| SSD | A-Data Premiere Pro SP600 32GB | www.adata-group.com | $45 |
| HDD | WD Caviar Blue 500GB | www.wd.com | $55 |
| GPU | Gigabyte GV-N660OC-2GD | www.gigabyte.us | $216 |
| Case | Rosewill R218 w/450W PSU | www.rosewill.com | $61 |
| OS | Windows 8 | www.microsoft.com | $90 |
| Total | $750 |
The Motherboard
Besides socket, my motherboard decision was dictated primarily by price and also by chipset selection. As Intel only offers its RST SSD caching (more on that later) on 7-series boards, I knew the minimum I could run is the H77 chipset. There's no top-shelf luxury brand here, either, for my budget. No, it's a basic ECS H77H2-M3 in microATX trim. It's pretty bare-bones with its two DIMM slots and one x16 PCIe slot but at least I get two SATA 6Gb/s ports, and two USB 3.0 ports, plus the SSD caching that will have my mechanical drive hopefully singing like an SSD. ECS isn't a brand too familiar to enthusiasts but it's well known in budget circles. In fact, I turned to ECS back when I gave former editor Dave Murphy a sound thrashing on a budget build challenge in 2007 (read it at: http://bit.ly/a3ipW4).
The RAM
I originally considered running a single 4GB DIMM in single-channel mode to save funds, as few apps are actually bandwidth-sensitive, but I decided that I didn't want to take the hit on any transcoding or encoding tests; so as much as it pains me, I filled the only two DIMM slots with a pair of 2GB Kingston DDR3/1333 modules. I decided 8GB was too pricey and Windows 8 runs fairly nicely on 4GB of RAM.
The Storage
I could have taken the easy way out and stripped out the optical drive and gone mechanical-only. But enough readers have convinced me that the optical is still needed—for now. So $16 went to the Lite-On iHas IHAS 124-04. I also really wanted to give the machine the luxurious feel of an SSD. One way to do that on the cheap is with Intel's Storage Response Technology, aka SSD caching software. It allowed me to pair the cheapest SSD I could find, A-Data's 32GB Premier Pro SP600, with a Western Digital 7,200rpm Caviar Blue 500GB drive. The Premier Pro SP600 is no Samsung 840 Pro, but with sequential reads of about 363MB/s and writes of 136MB/s it should give the rig a peppiness the other boxes won't have.
The GPU
I originally planned to use a hotter GPU but then realized that I'd not only pay extra for a Radeon HD 7870, but for a fatter PSU, too. Then I really thought about how much of an actual increase in performance I would see. Maybe 5 to 10 percent? Should I really throw the optical drive and SSD-like feel of my system overboard just to go from 23fps to 28fps in a game? No. In the end, Gigabyte's GeForce GTX 660 OC would fit the bill. The card has the same memory interface as the pricier 660 Ti, 2GB of RAM, and more importantly, it runs on a single PCIe 6-pin power plug.
The Case
Rosewill's R218 has long been a means to an end for budget builds. It's not sturdy, doesn't have the latest bells and whistles such as front USB 3.0 ports, but it's low-cost and it comes complete with a 450W PSU. I admit, this enclosure is a compromise, but I'll also say that once it's tucked far enough under my desk and has attracted enough dust, I won't even notice.
The PSU
The freebie 450W PSU that comes with my R218 case was the biggest gamble. Would it have the cojones to run the GeForce 660 and my quad Ivy Bridge? I didn't know going into this. One thing that does make me feel better is that Rosewill is Newegg's house brand, so technically, recourse is possible if something goes awry.
The Benchmarks
There's no surprises here. You can't put an Ivy Bridge quad-core against an AMD Phenom II X4 965 and expect anything except a total beat-down in anything that's CPU-heavy. The same can be said of the budget Radeon HD 7770 against the GeForce GTX 660. I will say one thing about our current Budget rig, it at least has an optical drive and a luxurious Samsung 840 aboard, which boosts its pleasure factor as well as its performance in disk-heavy tests. I could go on ad nauseum about this benchmark or that, but I'm more concerned about the other two rigs here, not our old budget build.
| Zero-point | ||
| Stitch.Efx 2.0 (sec) | 1,813 | 1,197 |
| ProShow Producer 5.0 (sec) | 3,127 | 1,802 |
| x264 HD 5.0 (fps) | 8 | 10.2 |
| STALKER: CoP (fps) | 29.9 | 57 |
| Hitman: Absolution (fps) | 14 | 23.4 |
| 3DMark 11 Performance | 3,983 | 6,148 |
Our current Budget build uses a Phenom II X4 965 BE, a Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3, 4GB of DDR3/1333, an Asus Radeon HD 7770, a 120GB Samsung 840, and WD Caviar Blue 1TB HDD. All tests were run on Windows 8.
The Closing Arguments
Each editor makes a final case for his config
My system might be unbalanced, but it has the video chops to do every GPU task imaginable.
Members of the Maximum PC court, let me start by stating that almost everything that a PC enthusiast does on his or her desktop uses the GPU in one way or another—from using multiple monitors to gaming. If you set your video encode to run on the GPU, the GeForce GTX 670 would easily smoke the Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition chosen by Tom and the GTX 660 selected by Gordon. Those who have high-res panels of 2560x1600 will also benefit from the 670, as it outperform the other video cards at higher resolutions. My processor might not have as much oomph as an FX part or an Ivy Bridge chip, but it gets the job done well enough while my GPU handles the brunt of my PC's load.
Helping to get these video tasks done is 8GB of Kingston Black DDR3/1600 RAM, which will more than suffice for your multitasking needs. The RAM is clocked higher than my competitors' and should give an edge when running multiple programs, too.
Something I found to be interesting is that every part I used in my system came with a manufacturer warranty of two or more years. Gordon, on the other hand, has a case and PSU covered for an almost insulting 30 days. The rig I put together might be lopsided when it comes to my CPU and GPU, but at least it's graphically appealing inside and out.
AM3+: Future Shock
At this budget level, the quality of individual components can be unreliable. Since a person spending this kind of money probably can't afford many replacement parts or major upgrades, it's better to start with the bar set as high as possible. The places you cut corners can end up costing you double when they break down unexpectedly. And you don't want to have to buy a whole new motherboard just to upgrade your CPU or add more RAM. Boards are a pain to replace, and if you have an OEM version of Windows, it's usually a violation of the user license to reinstall the OS on a system that has a different board.
My 970 Extreme3 has heatsinks on the voltage regulators, high-quality capacitors, four RAM slots, several PCI slots, five SATA 6Gb/s ports, three audio outputs, and an eSATA port. And the AM3+ socket should stay relevant for a few more years. None of this shows up directly on a benchmark, but there is high value for a builder who wants reliability, expansion, and adaptation.
The CX500's dual 8-pin PCIe cables can take every single-GPU card available, too. The Evo 212 cooler will allow big overclocks and should be compatible with the next couple of iterations of FX CPUs. The 210 Elite case can take a 24cm radiator despite costing about 50 bucks, and you don't need a modular power supply to keep the insides tidy, thanks to some generous space for cable management. My system may not win every benchmark, but I can say that it's built to last.
LGA1155: Looks Ain't Everything
Your honors, let me first state that I intended to present my argument for winning by using a short movie produced and written by Steven Spielberg and directed by J.J. Abrams with Tom Hanks playing my role. That idea was canned when I realized my competitors had no ability to play a DVD, much less burn a CD.
I will instead state my case like so: What matters most? How "pretty" a case is or whether your photo chores take twice as long as the box next to it? Sure, you might get a few more frames at a still unplayable frame rate (is 28fps vs. 23.4fps really something to crow about when you're actually playing the game?), but what about the extra 15 seconds it takes to launch the game or your favorite app? Yes, Windows 8 does indeed have speedier launch times, but it ain't as speedy as you'd expect on a 7,200rpm low-areal-density drive. The LGA1155 truly gives you the luxurious feel of a rig with an SSD.
And lest anyone play the "upgrade" card by saying LGA1155 is a dead man walking, let me remind the judges that there is indeed a healthy upgrade path for this system, as you could drop in a Core i7-3770K tomorrow, if you could afford that luxury chip.
So to reiterate: This is the only balanced system here offering top-of-the-line performance in all categories while giving you smooth, SSD-like responsiveness and an optical drive so you don't have to panhandle a drive or USB stick from your buddy just to install the OS.
Taking It to the Benchmarks
The test scores tell the story of where each rig succeeds and fails
To evaluate the performance of our systems, we pitted them against our current Budget Blueprint, a Phenom II X4 965 box with a fresh install of Windows 8, in a subset of our system benchmarks, in addition to a couple of games run at 1920x1080 rather than the typical nut-busting 2560x1600 we use to test $5,000 boxes. We also ran an additional set of benchmarks to increase our data. You can see the full suite of test results at MaximumPC.com when the story is posted online.
The benchmarks you see here held the most sway over our panel of judges. The results were a bit eye-opening.
First up, our CPU benchmarks. TechArp.com's x264 5.01 encoding test is heavily multithreaded and if you have eight cores, it'll use them. ProShow Producer 5.0 is optimized for four cores and Stitch.EFx 2.0 is a combination: The first two-thirds of the run is single-threaded with the last third exploiting multiple threads. The FM2-based A6 CPU gets destroyed by the FX and Core i5 parts. It even gets pummeled by the Phenom II in x264 and Stich.Efx, but shockingly beats the quad-core Phenom II in ProShow Producer. Between the FX and Core i5, the more efficient i5 easily trounces the FX in Stitch. The spread came as a surprise since we didn't think the relatively low clocks of the Core i5 would spank the FX part so badly, especially with the overclock Tom put on the FX CPU. The overclock definitely helped the FX in ProShow, too. It didn't win, but it came surprisingly close to the Ivy Bridge quad CPU. Finally, in the second pass of x264, the six cores of the FX put it on top—and we expected the Core i5 to take top honors.
Moving on to gaming, we had expected the FM2 platform to spank both other boxes with its $350 GPU, but the dual-core/shared-core design of the CPU put it at a severe disadvantage in 3DMark 11 and Hitman: Absolution. Both feature physics tests, which are CPU-heavy, and the dual-core severely sags. The good news for the FM2 box is that it did manage to win the STALKER: CoP test, but if you look at the numbers, it's not what you'd expect of a $350 GPU. We've long said that gaming is 90 percent GPU, but seeing this data, we're inclined to revise that to 75 percent—but only when coupled with a decent quad-core chip.
And the Best Budget Build Is….
To pick our winner, each PC was presented to an independent panel of Maximum PC editors not involved in the contest.
The FM2 system was almost immediately eliminated from contention. Yes, it did have the highest score in STALKER: CoP, but that's it, and it wasn't exactly by a large margin. The overall thrashing it took from the LGA1155 and the AM3+ as well as the older Phenom II 965 relegated it to a distant third place in all three judge's eyes.
That made it a two-horse race between the AM3+ and LGA1155 system. After seeing the benchmark data and poking around the interiors of the systems, Judge Josh Norem selected the AM3+ as the winner. Norem said the arguments were pretty clear-cut: The AM3+ has easy upgrade options in the empty DIMM slots, a full ATX motherboard, and a case that's far superior to the LGA1155's Rosewill enclosure for enthusiasts.
Judge Katherine Stevenson, however, sided against Judge Norem, arguing that the better CPU performance and the close-enough gaming performance (Gordon's "28fps vs. 23fps—big whoop" argument obviously worked) put the LGA1155 ahead. She also said the SSD caching was a persuasive factor in her pick, as 500GB HDD performance is nothing anyone wants to be stuck with, even if the case is prettier. Judge Stevenson even did some mouse driving on both systems and timed how long it took to launch games and apps and boot the systems. The results only cemented her belief that the LGA1155, though ugly as hell, was the winner.
The swing vote on the panel was Judge Jimmy Thang. Judge Thang crunched the benchmark numbers and decided that the LGA1155 was the overall better system. Judge Thang felt the CPU-heavy wins were more persuasive than the GPU wins, which were pretty close when you look at the frame rates. He also said the caching SSD proved to be a critical advantage in performance and agreed that the ability to cut application and launch times outweighed a sturdier PSU or case since those don't impact felt performance.
It's not a unanimous decision, but the judges have ruled: The LGA1155 system is the Budget Build winner.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti Graphics Card Could Launch by End of Year
Posted: 09 Sep 2013 07:56 AM PDT
Don't be surprised if Nvidia launches another budget GPU in 2013
It was previously rumored that Nvidia might end the year with a bang by unveiling a GeForce GTX Titan Ultra and/or GTX 790 graphics card, but maybe the GPU maker also has something a little more affordable up its sleeve. A GPU-Z screenshot posted to a Chinese-language website indicates that a GeForce GTX 750 Ti is in the works, serving as a successor to the GeForce GTX 650 Ti launched last year.
The card has two names in the GPU-Z screenshot: GTX 750 Ti and GTX 760 SE. This isn't unusual, as according to wccftech.com, there was a similar GPU-Z screenie prior to the GeForce GTX 650 Ti launch that labeled the card as a GTX 660 SE.
In any event, the mystery card is said to have 32 ROPs, 80 TMUs, a revised core running at 1,033MHz base and 1,098MHz boost, and 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1,502MHz on a 256-bit memory bus.
According to the site it was posted on, the card could debut as soon as this month or in early October.
CyberPowerPC Touts ZeusBook Ultimate as World's Slimmest 17-inch Gaming Notebook
Posted: 09 Sep 2013 07:31 AM PDT
Bucking the trend of bulky gaming laptops
Well equipped gaming laptops measuring 17 inches are generally of the desktop replacement variety, which in part means they're big and bulky. CyberPowerPC has something else in mind. The boutique system builder today unveiled its new ZeusBook Ultimate Series, which the company claims are the thinnest and lightest 17-inch gaming notebooks in the world. Let's have a look.
The ZeusBook Ultimate is less than an inch thick and weighs south of six pounds. There are two baseline configurations to choose from: Ultimate 100 and Ultimate 200, both of which are supposed to offer the same functionality of a full-size laptop in a slim form factor, CyberPowerPC says.
Pricing starts at $1,429 for the ZeusBook Ultimate 100. That gets you an 17-inch Full HD 1080p display, Intel Core i7 4700HQ processor, 8GB of DDR3-1600 RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M graphics, 1TB hard drive, Killer N1202 networking, HD webcam, two USB 2.0 ports, three USB 3.0 ports, HDMI output, and Windows 8 64-bit. For $1,535, the ZeusBook Ultimate 200 ups the ante with with a 60GB mSATA SSD to complement the 1TB HDD.
One neat thing about the ZeusBook Ultimate's display is that it can connect up to three external monitors with support for a Super HD 3840x2160 resolution, or four times the resolution of Full HD.
The Zeusbook Ultimate Series is available now.
Western Digital Acquires Enterprise Flash Storage Provider Virident for $685 Million
Posted: 09 Sep 2013 06:16 AM PDT
HGST spends its way into enterprise SSD sector
Flash storage is sexy right now, so it's really not all that surprising that Western Digital went and scooped up Virident Systems, a provider of server-side flash storage solutions, for $685 million in cash. Virident will be integrated into HGST, a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital, the two companies announced today. In doing so, HGST becomes a player in enterprise solid state drives (SSDs), a market that's predicted to be worth $7 billion by 2017, according to International Data Corporation (IDC).
"We have established a competitive position in the enterprise SSD space and with our recently announced acquisitions we are increasing our commitment to become an even more significant player in this high growth segment," said Steve Milligan, president and chief executive officer, Western Digital. "Virident has a proven leadership team and a culture of innovation. Its combination of great people, leading products and advanced technology will enhance our increasingly strategic position in enterprise storage."
Virident's flagship product is its FlashMax II PCI-E SSD. It can be installed in any server and offers the highest capacity (up to 2.2TB) in a single low-profile card, while still maintaining twice as much performance as its nearest competitor when measured at near-full capacity, the company claims. Virident is also known for its FlashMax Connect software suite, the first of its kind to deliver a shared server-side flash storage tier with enterprise-class reliability.
Seagate Notches 1 Million Shingled Magnetic Recording Drive Shipments, Eyes 20TB HDDs by 2020
Posted: 09 Sep 2013 06:00 AM PDT
SMR is key to Seagate's plans to ship 20TB hard drives in 2020.
Seagate on Monday announced it has shipped over 1 million hard disk drives (HDDs) using shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology. According to Seagate, SMR technology will play a critical role in developing hard drives of ever-increasing capacity with improved areal density, which is the amount of data that can be stored on a single disk, and is the first step to reaching a 20TB HDD within the next 7 years.
Using SMR technology, Seagate says it's on track to improve areal density by up to 25 percent or 1.25TB per disk, thus delivering HDDs with the lowest cost per gigabyte and reaching capacities of 5TB and beyond.
Prior to SMR, the big technology in HDDs was perpendicular recording, which improved areal density by arranging bits in a perpendicular fashion. This enabled narrower data tracks and read/write heads, though due to physical limitations, read/write heads have reached the point where they can no longer get smaller, Seagate claims.
SMR technology focuses on the media and rearranges the way data is stored on a disk by overlapping tracks, much in the same way shingles on a roof are stacked.
"With nearly 7 billion inhabitants on earth we are creating an astounding 2.7 zettabytes of data a year and as such are rapidly approaching the physical limits of how much can be written on a single conventional hard disk drive," said Mark Re, Seagate's chief technology officer.
As a side benefit, Seagate says SMR technology also improves reliability since it allows the drive maker to use fewer heads and disks to achieve new capacity points.
IT Solutions Provider Arkoon Vows Support for Windows XP After Microsoft's April 2014 Deadline
Posted: 09 Sep 2013 05:45 AM PDT
An alternative to leaving legacy software behind
Microsoft is planning to cut off support for Windows XP in April 2014, just a few months shy of the legacy operating system's 13th birthday. Many computers have long moved on from Windows XP and are now rocking Windows 7 or Windows 8 (or even Vista), though it's estimated that between 20 percent (StatCounter) and 33 percent (NetMarketShare) of PCs around the world haven't yet upgraded. What happens to all those users come April?
Well, they'll cease to be supported by Microsoft, meaning no more security updates. This has dire implications. Once a new vulnerability is discovered, a cyber criminal can exploit it indefinitely knowing that Microsoft won't be plugging up the security hole any time soon, or ever.
However, there are third-party alternatives ready to carry the baton. One of them is Arkoon Network Security, an IT solutions provider that recognizes there are thousands of businesses reluctant to upgrade to a newer OS for one reason or another. Arkoon is ready to cash in on these users and businesses with its ExtendedXP service.
"The ExtendedXP service is built on the industry leading Arkoon endpoint security products and services that are already protecting leading organizations around the world," Arkoon says. "ExtendedXP (EXP) is the only solution on the market to date which will allow for effective proactive protection of Windows XP workstations after April 2014."
ExtendedXP is said to combine the best of its StormShield HIPS technology with a unique monitoring service. Subscribers to the service will receive proactive protection against unpatched vulnerabilities and receive alerts when there are newly identified flaws.
Sounds like a solid alternative to upgrading, though Arkoon didn't announce any pricing information or how soon its ExtendedXP service will be available.
Newegg Daily Deals: XCOM: Enemy Unknown on the Cheap!
Posted: 09 Sep 2013 05:30 AM PDT
Top Deal:
With past deals on Borderlands 2 and Bioshock Infinite, it's been a great week to fatten your games collection, but why stop now? Today's top deal features another popular game for a low price -- it's XCOM: Enemy Unknown (online game code) for just $16 with free shipping (normally $40). This turn-based tactical RPG is a remake of the 1994 classic UFO: Enemy Unknown and has won a number of awards since release.
Other Deals:
Rosewill 90 Piece Professional Computer Tool Kit for $30 with free shipping (normally $50)
Supermicro ATX Server Motherboard LGA 1150 Intel for $201 with shipping for $6 (normally $216 - use coupon code: [COMPNTSEP33])
Enermax Coenus Gunmetal Grey ATX Mid Tower Computer Case for $60 with free shipping (normally $70 - use coupon code: [COMPNTSEP6]; additional $10 mail-in rebate)
Raidmax 850W 80 Plus Gold Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply for $100 with shipping for $4 (normally $120; additional $15 mail-in rebate)
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