What Hardware Should I Buy? - March 2009

High End Hardware

With a bigger budget you’ll see a big step up in hardware quality and performance, especially as it allows us to include better cooling components like a premium case and a better aftermarket CPU cooler.

A bit more cash also buys a whole lot more processor, graphics card and hard drive space than our recommendations in the affordable system, all of which can seriously improve your system’s everyday performance. What's more, our selections at this level should be more than enough to take on even the most demanding of games for a good while to come, giving you a much more future proof system if you're willing to spend that little bit more.

There’re more than a few changes for our high end hardware selections this month, following some impressive new products and some further wrangling in the world of graphics card pricing which sees the Radeon HD 4870 1GB make a return as our graphics card of choice. While both it and the GTX 260 are evenly matched performance wise, some board partners have cut prices amidst rumours of an upcoming die-shrink to RV770 and have again swung the market its way.

Graphics Card

First Choice: Radeon HD 4870 1GB
UK Pricing: £170.19 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $239.99 (ex. Tax)

Yes, once again the ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB is our high end graphics card of choice, reclaiming the spot it last held back in December following some board partners offering the card for well below the usual asking price of £200 and a good £10 less than even the cheapest Nvidia GeForce GTX 260-216.

When the cards were evenly priced, it was the Nvidia that card that won our favour, thanks mostly to Nvidia’s CUDA accelerated extras like PhysX . However, these features, while showing signs of potential with inclusion in high profile launches like Mirror’s Edge, have yet to prove to be totally compelling and given the choice between having PhysX or £10 we’ll take £10 every time – at least for now.

Other than the price and Nvidia extras though, there’s still almost nothing to separate these two cards, with them both trading blows right across our comprehensive benchmark suite. While the GTX 260 is generally better at the more common desktop resolutions of 1,280 x 1,024 and 1,680 x 1,050 and at lower anti-aliasing settings the 4870 1GB comes out on top at higher resolutions and anti-aliasing settings – there’s really very little to separate them based purely on performance.

Novatech has some awesome prices for Radeon HD 4870 1GB cards but we'd highly recommend getting in quick before stock runs out or the prices go back up again. The Powercolor we've listed has a two year warranty but there are also others not too much more expensive either. Also, be wary to check that it's a 1GB model and not the 512MB - there is a performance difference and we'd always recommend the higher memory capacity in this case.

CPU

First Choice: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 stepping
UK Pricing: £156.39 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $197.99 (ex. Tax)

Intel’s seminal Core 2 Quad Q6600 quad-core processor was all we were ever going to consider for our recommended high-end processor and even after the release of Core i7, it is still the processor that we would buy for our own home systems. Tim recently upgraded his gaming machine and stuck with a Core 2 Quad, stating that he had no reason to upgrade to Core i7.

While the spec sheet is fairly impressive: a quad-core processor running at 2.4GHz with 8MB of cache, the chip’s overclocking headroom is legendary. By following our handy guide, you should comfortably hit clock speeds of 3.0GHz even if you’re using an Intel stock heatsink, without posing any stability or processor lifespan problems whatsoever.

With exchange rates fluctuating more than Britney Spears' music career, the Q6600 has returned back up to over £150, which for a 3.0GHz quad-core is still a great bargain. Also, while Intel has released 45nm Yorkfield quad-core processors since, none can match the value offered by this inexpensive performance behemoth. It was our processor of the year for a second year running in 2008, and seems set to continue its longevity well into 2009.

Motherboard

First Choice: Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R
UK Price (as reviewed): £109.25 (inc. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed): $117.99 (ex. Tax)

While the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R might not be the most well featured board in the world, lacking features like ATI CrossFire and dual Ethernet, it makes up for it with far more useful inclusions like plenty of SATA ports, great onboard audio and a really excellent BIOS which makes overclocking a snap – all genuinely useful features that we wish more boards would sport.

It’s also very affordable coming in at just over £100, is sensibly laid out and to top it all off, looks great – perfect for a windowed case to show off your hardware. It’s a solid overclocker too, especially for the quad core Q6600 we’ve recommended here and should provide a very stable overclocking platform for any Core 2 CPU.

While we appreciate the lack of CrossFire may discourage some, if you’re after a solid P45 based board which doesn’t compromise where it really counts, then then Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R is an easy recommendation.