Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Although the Core i7 processor we're using in the extreme system is more than
six times faster than our budget processor, the performance of the budget
processor holds up very well in comparison to that of two of our current pri-
mary systems, both of which were high-performance systems when they were
built. (We were stunned to see just how well that Core2 Quad held up; we
built that system almost two years earlier as an Extreme System and, with a
CPU Mark score considerably higher than some current Core i7 processors, the
Core2 Quad still nearly qualifies for that designation.)
The Core i3, which qualifies as a low-mainstream processor, is nearly twice
as fast as our budget processor, but it also costs twice as much. And the 240
Regor budget processor is more than twice as fast as the Intel Atom D510,
which itself is faster than processors like the Intel Pentium 4 and Celeron and
the AMD Athlon 64 and Sempron, all of which are still in use in tens of millions
of systems.
If you can afford to spend a bit more for the processor, consider something
like the triple-core AMD Athlon II X3 435 Rana. An extra $15 or so buys you a
50% performance boost in processor performance over the 240 Regor, tak-
ing you into the low-mainstream processor class. (Of course, other than for
processor-bound tasks, 50% faster processor performance doesn't translate
into 50% faster system performance, but it does provide noticeably snappier
response times.)
Motherboard
ASRock K10N78M-PRO ( http://www.asrock.com )
The 240 Regor is a Socket AM3 processor, so the first selection criterion for a
motherboard in the $60 range was Socket AM3 compatibility, which either
a hybrid Socket AM2+/AM3 model or a pure Socket AM3 model provides. (A
hybrid motherboard can use either a Socket AM2+ or a Socket AM3 processor;
an AM3 motherboard can use only a Socket AM3 processor.) Note that socket
compatibility is only a first-cut criterion. Just because a motherboard supports
Socket AM3 processors doesn't necessarily mean it supports the specific Socket
AM3 processor you want to use.
We'd prefer to use a first-tier motherboard from GIGABYTE or ASUS, both of
which offer Socket AM3 motherboards in this price range. Unfortunately,
budget motherboards from first-tier makers are feature-light. For example,
they may offer only 100BaseT (100 megabit/second) networking rather than
1000BaseT (1,000 Mb/s, or gigabit ), and their integrated video is several gen-
erations out of date. So we narrowed things down by looking for a suitable
motherboard made by ASRock, a second-tier motherboard manufacturer that
is famed for its first-tier quality. We found several ASRock candidates in the $55
to $65 range.
Narrowing things further, we wanted integrated video in the NVIDIA GeForce
8200 or ATI RADEON HD 3200 class, either of which provides excellent 2D dis-
play quality and has enough 3D horsepower to use for casual gaming. (Boards
with integrated RADEON HD 4200 sell for a few dollars more, and you might ex-
pect they'd outperform the GeForce 8200/RADEON 3200 boards, but they don't.
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