![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Wednesday, November 30, 2005
- Author:
- Keith Dugger
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
[H] Holiday System Guide - 2005
As the 2005 holiday season is near, we dug deep into our holiday cheer and came up with a Newegg four-way system buying guide. We applied $500 and $1000 to upgrade systems and $1200 and $2000 to full systems for both AMD and Intel-based purchases.
Full Systems - $1200
Our first section will include full systems. We like to include AMD and Intel together to allow readers to directly compare systems. Any component that is the same on both systems is listed under Common Components on the next page. Finally, I will summarize each system separately at the end of the section.
Motherboard - AMD
ASUS remains one of the top motherboard manufacturers in terms of both product quality and support. The A8N-SLI Premium is an example of just that. We gave the A8N-SLI Deluxe a HardOCP Must Have Hardware award back in January in part due to a very impressive 306 FSB overclock while running two video cards.
The Premium includes support for the 939-pin line of AMD processors including the new X2 dual core. Powered by NVIDIA’s nForce4 SLI chipset, the A8N-SLI Premium offers support for two PCI Express x16 slots, a myriad of hard drive RAID options and up to 4GB of DDR400 memory.
Plus, you can't go wrong with included 8-channel audio and two Gigabit LAN ports.
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Newegg Link
Motherboard - Intel
We stayed in the ASUS house and chose the P5ND2-SLI Deluxe motherboard for the Intel $1200 full system. We chose this same board back in the August with the HardOCP 2000, Q3-05 edition. This board is still a great contender and is now almost $70 less expensive than in August.
The P5ND2-SLI Deluxe supports the new Pentium D dual core as well as the other LGA775-based chips from Intel. It can even support up to 8GB of DDR2 memory when combined with a 64-bit OS.
ASUS P5ND2-SLI Deluxe Newegg Link
Processor – AMD
The Athlon 64 3700+ is a great chip for our $1200 full system. Operating at 2.2GHz with a full 1MB of L2 cache, this chip is a terrific performer. It supports the latest instruction sets from AMD and runs over the HyperTransport bus at 1GHz.
We’ve chosen a retail box that includes a heatsink and fan (HSF). This is cheaper on the guide and allows users to choose their own aftermarket HSF should the need arise.
Processor - Intel
The Pentium 4 550J running at 3.4GHz with 1MB L2 cache is a good fit for our P5ND2-SLI Deluxe. It is a Prescott core with 800MHz FSB and Hyper-Threading support included. At approximately $275, the 550J fits without our budget requirements.
Again, we chose a retail box version to include a HSF.
Memory – AMD
Corsair is one of the first places we turn when looking for system memory. Their factory matched TWINX kits are hard to beat. For the $1200 full system, we’ve chosen a pair of 512MB DDR 400 sticks from Corsair’s XMS series. These sticks are highly stable and perform very well. Corsair includes a lifetime warranty should any problems arise.
1GB (2 x 512MB) of dual channel memory will perform very well and offer a good amount of headroom to run most of your applications.
Corsair XMS 2x512 (CL2) Newegg Link
Memory - Intel
Sticking with 1GB and Corsair, we’ve picked up another pair for the Intel side of the house. The ASUS motherboard uses DDR2 memory and we’ve chosen Corsair’s 2x512MB package running at DDR2 675 speeds.
Corsair provides great memory, great support, and has never let us down.
Corsair XMS 2x512 DDR2 Newegg Link