What Hardware Should I Buy? - Feb 2009

Graphics Card

Alternative: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
UK Pricing: £201.85 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $247.98 (ex. Tax)

It seems we've been gushing over the Radeon HD 4870 for most of 2008 after it arrived in the summer delivering fantastic performance at a very reasonable price point. AMD released the 1GB version of the card towards the end of the year and it delivers real performance improvements in some titles for only a little extra cash over the 512MB version of the card.

In fact, in recent games the performance difference between the 512MB and 1GB versions of the HD 4870 has become even more noticeable and this is only going to become more and more apparent as time goes on and games get more demanding. For such a small amount of extra outlay, you're buying a whole lot more future proofing in our opinion.

Unlike with the Radeon HD 4850, the dual slot cooler on the HD 4870 is more than enough to keep the card cool and availability of custom cooled cards is still pretty patchy. Because of this, we feel you’re better off looking for cheaper stock versions of the card, and in the UK, Sapphire has the cheapest offering right now at just over £200. It's another victim of increasing prices unfortunately, but still cracking value, especially as it's only ten percent more expensive than the cheapest 4870 512MB - well worth it in our opinion.

Processor

Alternative: AMD Phenom II X4 940
UK Pricing: £199.98 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $234.99 (ex. Tax)

or

Alternative Intel Core 2 Duo E7400
UK Pricing: £101.95 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $119.99 (ex. Tax)

AMD's Phenom II X4 940 is a worthy competitor to Intel's Core 2 Quad and even though it doesn't match Intel in clock to clock performance (we still think the Q6600 G0 is still the better buy for the money), it is still really very inexpensive for a 3GHz quad-core CPU that should match the Q6600 for a 3.5-3.6GHz overclock. For those wanting to stick with AMD, its 45nm Black Edition is a much better alternative to the older 65nm Phenoms. AMD's socket AM3 CPUs with DDR3 are due in a short time and are backward compatible with the AM2+ DDR2 socket, however if the listed early prices end up as launch day prices - our money is staying with this AM2+ only CPU for now.

On the other hand, despite our love and insistence that for gamers particularly the E8400 is a better purchase, we've also noticed the Core 2 Duo E7500 and E7400. Both of which have lost half the L2 cache compared to the full fat 8000-series Wolfdale CPUs, the E7400 in particular is a good £40 cheaper than the E8400, but it also has a slightly higher multiplier allowing for a much easier overclock (ala the Q6600 versus Q9550). Let's not forget that 3MB of cache is still pretty massive and less cache equals less heat which means cooler running and even more overhead for overclocking. We'll look at getting one of these in for review to confirm our educated suspicions as soon as we can.

Motherboard

Alternative: Asus M3A79-T
UK Pricing: £136.72 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $184.25 (ex. Tax)

While a bit more expensive that we'd like, the new southbridge which offers advanced overclocking features for the Black Edition Phenom II X4 processors is worth it. In addition, there are more SATA ports and the 790FX is AMD's premium chipset offering a pair of full PCI-Express 2.0 x16 lanes for CrossFire. We could save some cash and grab a 790GX for £25 less, but having used the original Asus M3A32-MVP extensively that uses the 790FX with the older SB600 southbridge, and listening to quite a bit of positive feedback about this board we think it's worth stretching for the M3A79-T if you can.

Case

Alternative: Akasa Omega
UK Pricing: £114.87 (inc. VAT)

One of the best cases we saw released in 2008, the Akasa Omega takes the tried and tested design inherited from the Akasa Eclipse and improves upon it with significantly improved ventilation and a stylish and well constructed aluminium door to hide away your drive bays.

Almost all of the case is made of aluminium, so is deceptively light for its extra large dimensions and the build quality throughout is fantastic. The attention to detail is also good with detachable front panel cables, included coaster wheels and plenty of cable ties and clips to help keep the jungle of wires inside under control.

The Omega also benefits from one of the easiest build systems on the market right now, with a brilliant removable stainless steel motherboard tray, and the whole package is rounded off with genuinely silent cooling as standard. If the P182 is a little too common for you, the Akasa Omega is a seriously attractive alternative, albeit at a higher price.

Optical Drive

Alternative: LG GGGC H2OL Blu-ray, HDDVD DVDRW combo drive
UK Pricing: £64.36 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $139.99 (ex. Tax)

If you’ve got a little money to spare, or just want to enable High-Definition movie playback on your PC, then this drive from LG is by far the best value solution right now – it’s certainly cheaper than a Playstation 3!

Packing all the usual read and write capabilities on top of the ability to read both High-Definition Blu-ray and the now defunct HD DVD format discs, it's an excellent combination drive, although you'll need to purchase disc playback software separately from companies like Cyberlink or Corel. Nevertheless, for less than £65 this is great little drive.