Processor:

• AMD Athlon II X3 450 : Price USD 76
As were mentioned during my previous Best budget desktop PC segment, processor these days are powerful enough to handle all normal computer operations, and even some budget CPUs are overkill for most normal users. One of the cheapest best performance/price ratio available right now is the AMD Athlon II X3 450. It is basically the same CPU as the previous budget PC recommendation but being slightly cheaper and faster by 400MHz at 3.1GHz. Will you notice a difference in your everyday computer usage? Nah. Sorry to dissapoint but for that very same price you get an extra 400MHz as compared to two quarters ago. And it still does your daily web browsing, Youtube, Facebook, MSN instant messaging, light gaming & watching 1080p HD video (more on that in the GPU segment) flawlessly. This is the cheapest triple core in AMD’s CPU lineup. I don’t recommend the Athlon II X2 as with just an extra $10 you get an extra core and…a chance to unlock an extra core as well, if you are adventurous.

RAM @ Memory:

• 2 x 2GB DDR3 1333MHz, total 4GB RAM : Price RM135(USD 42)

The price of semiconductor memory dropped tremendously during the past quarters. That explains why my desktop PC now having 5GB of RAM. Incidentally, buying a pair of 2GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM is the same price as buying just one stick back “” generic no prescription two quarters ago. Having a total of 4GB of RAM might seem kinda overkill but just forging out a small fraction of the total cost of the computer for an extra 2GB RAM is justified based on the fact that RAM price might accentuate in the near future. Having a 4GB memory for your system also means you can experiment by turning off the page file entirely, this leads to faster processing as the system stores all temporary data onto the RAM instead of the hard disk which is many times slower. This is very experimental as so far nobody has successfully prove a 100% stability of turning off paging file, even more so that some applications are written to use the paging file as temporary storage. However for my computer thus far, with a Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit version and having paging file turned off entirely, I was able to run a good 5months without any crashing. And the benefit Brand “” of having page file turned off? Significantly faster startup, shutdown(hell lot faster), and normal multi-task with few programs.

Motherboard:

• Asus M4A88T-M/USB3 : Price RM340 (USD 109)

Nothing much fancy about this motherboard over the Asus M4A785GTD-V Evo from the previous budget desktop article, apart from the USB3.0 addition and the AMD 880G chipset which is basically the same as the AMD 785G anyway. The USB 3.0 is definitely Buy online “” a nice upgrade over USB 2.0 with speeds improvement almost 10 times. Which is good enough seeing external hard drive and SSD these days were bottlenecked by the slow USB 2.0 speed @ 480 Mbps. The price point with features listed below is certainly a bang for buck:

• Socket AM3
• AMD 880G/SB710
• 4xDDR3 slot, up to 16GB
• 1 PCIe 2.0 x16, 2 PCIe 2.0 x1, 1 PCI, 2 USB 3.0 ports, 10 USB 2.0
• HDMI port, DVI, D-SUB
• Realtek® RTL8111E Gigabit LAN controller
• VT1708S 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC

Hard Disk:

• Western Digital 3.5″ 1TB 7200rpm : Price RM165 (USD 53)

One thing about Hard disk is that it got outdated pretty fast, comparable to discreet graphics card. The 500GB variant recommended previously is no longer one of the lowest price per GB hard disk. The lowest price per GB hard disk now is bestow on the Western Digital 2TB, where it cost only RM0.138 (USD 0.045) per GB compared to the 1TB’s RM0.165 (USD 0.053). However, most users will find it overkill for this humongous (you will laugh to read this again next year or so) storage.

Graphics:

• AMD HD4250 Graphics : Price none

This integrated graphics solution from the Asus M4A88T-M/USB3 motherboard is able to play 1080p/720p HD movies and some light gaming on older games. Even the most famous online game Warcraft III mod – Dota can be runned without problem. This is basically the same graphics since 780G and 785G but being improved incrementally, no graphics performance improvement though. Why not Sandy Bridge one might ask? The total cost for Sandy Bridge system is not justified, and you can’t get such features-packed motherboard at that cost for Sandy Bridge LGA1155 platform. As this guide is more towards on budget oriented people, AMD system is still a very viable choice for budget conscious buyers.

Some notes about this recommendation:
If you are into heavy gaming, this is definitely not for you. This guide is written for people looking to build a very budget-friendly desktop which can perform their daily task without much hiccups, includes but not limited to the list below:

• Internet usage; Facebook, emails, MSN instant messaging.
• Watching HD Youtube videos
• office productivity suite;word processing, email, powerpoint.
• light gaming
• software development; Java, Android, iPhone, .Net, PHP…etc
• media decode/encoding; HD videos, mp3, WMV, mp4.

<<–back

Lets start with some introduction of AMD Bulldozer. AMD Bulldozer is AMD last bet on taking over the CPU crown. Failing another time will give a really serious blow to AMD’s market share. They need to sell more profitable CPUs instead of low end CPUs which doesn’t give AMD that high profit margin, high end CPU is all the business. AMD Bulldozer is a whole redesign architecture, ever since AMD K8 (Athlon64/Athlon FX remember?) there are no major changes in AMD CPU architecture for the Phenom generation one and as well as Phenom II. Which is why Intel is able to pull ahead of AMD in terms of performance per clock and thus power efficiency.

AMD gone further by making a whole new redesign which never seen before in any CPU. An AMD Bulldozer consists of modules instead of cores like what you found in modern CPU these days, like the quad core Phenom II X4, dual core Core2Duo and the latest king of the crown 6 cores Core i7 990X. A single module from Bulldozer consist of two integer scheduler and one floating point scheduler. The floating point scheduler is able to duplicate to two threads at the hardware level like what you have seen in Intel’s HyperThreading technology using some sort of SMT. Basically, a single module is bigger than a single core in terms of die size and smaller than a dual core. As far as performance goes, a Bulldozer module is definitely faster than a single core, but loses out to a typical dual core. AMD claimed that a Bulldozer module is more efficient than a dual core design that it only uses 12% bigger die size for the duplicated integer scheduler but giving out way more than 12% of threaded performance. Another reason for this design is that a typical multi core design will suffer from hardware wastage as idle resources will be duplicated across the chip, as was claimed by AMD.

A single module from AMD Bulldozer

That should be done for the introduction of AMD Bulldozer, I won’t be lengthy as this is not a “Information of AMD Bulldozer” topic. So here comes the comparisons and some early indication of what could be expected from AMD Bulldozer, could Bulldozer faster than Core i7 and Sandy Bridge? Lets find out.

The first point to be emphasized is the benchmark figures provided by AMD, there are no definite figures as it was secretly kept but according to TechPowerUp here, Bulldozer is faster than Core i7 950 3GHz quad core 8 threads with hyperthreading technology by 50%! That’s a very big claim but I feel no surprise. AMD Bulldozer is a threaded monster. A single Bulldozer CPU consists of a minimum of 4 modules, which is equal to 8 threads. I wouldn’t call it an 8-core processor as it doesn’t really sound like a core to me based on the technical specifications. Since each Bulldozer’s module consist of two integer scheduler units, it would be a no brainer that Bulldozer is able to handle 8 threads better than Core i7 950 which is a hyper-threaded 8 threads quad core processor. This is especially true in most of the applications we run on our desktop today which rely mostly on integer unit processing. AMD gives less priority on designing a better floating point unit for their new architecture mainly because AMD believes the future will be APU, where all floating point calculations will be done by the graphics processing unit instead.

From my point of view, the design of a 4 module Bulldozer will be almost on par to an equal-architecture with a true 6 cores CPU. Which means, if Core i7 is head on head with Bulldozer for single thread performance, Core i7 need at least a 6 core CPU to match a 4 module Bulldozer. But based on the 50% better performance claim by AMD, that also means Core i7 980X will be smoked out by Bulldozer. We can take that 50% claim with a grain of salt, but being faster than Core i7 950 is definitely creditable. And the next question is, what’s the clock rate for Bulldozer that AMD uses to compare to a core i7 950?

How about Intel Sandy Bridge VS AMD Bulldozer? Sandy Bridge is nothing new, its performance can be seen from the two years old Core i7. Similiar in performance but cheaper. And that’s good for someone looking for high end CPU at mid range price. Sandy Bridge definitely the better choice if AMD Bulldozer is priced at the higher range. And with a bonus Quick Sync technology, which lets you do video encoding/decoding at a speed many times faster than a high end graphics card from nvidia and AMD. Sandy Bridge, the Core i5 2500k could really give AMD a serious headache, the 50% claim is better to be true and best is if it runs at much slower clock speed too.

This benchmark was taken from Rumourpedia, for salt fans. The reason for me not mentioning in the article because it was just a rumour.

The next point that I would like to mention is the “FX” moniker. “FX” is a denominator used by AMD to label a high performance CPU. Remember the Athlon FX days? Athlon FX-55 and Athlon FX-57 both won CPU of the year back during AMD’s golden days. And AMD is bringing back this “FX” back to their new CPU lineup this year. And guess what, we could be seeing such high end CPU soon from AMD. I don’t think AMD will simply spoil their “FX” for being just mere marketing purposes, but that’s just a probability. FX-8130P, FX-8110, FX-6110 and FX-4110 are some of the CPUs you can be expected from AMD’s Bulldozer architecture line of CPU. And according to Xbitslab, Zambezi is able to offer 50% better performance in multimedia applications compared to Phenom II. Zambezi is the code name for the new Bulldozer architecture CPU. That just doesn’t sound right, as with the improved and heavily threaded architecture with only 50% improvements? Core i7 is able to leave a huge margin over Phenom II on some multimedia benchmarks especially on video/audio encoding. And that 50% faster than Core i7 claim by AMD makes me believe the benchmark of the 50% claim is definitely not a multimedia benchmark.

Is AMD Bulldozer faster than Intel Core i7? I wouldn’t doubt that if Core i7 is either Nahalem or Westmere. Based on the info gathered so far, I would say yes. It is faster than Core i7 based on my speculation and it better be true. However, Core i7 Nehalem is more than two years old while Westmere just turned 1 few months ago. A more suitable candidate for Intel is the Ivy Bridge. There are not much info thus far, but two things are certain; it is a 22nm die shrink and faster than previous generation of Core i7. It means trouble for AMD as Ivy Bridge is smaller, faster and cheaper to produce. We better pray miracles for AMD Bulldozer if we want cheaper CPU, competition brings benefit for the consumer.

<<--back

AMD Phenom II Athlon II cpuz K10Stat 400MHz idle superpi taskmanager

Very sorry to Intel folks, this awesome cpu tweaker is not available for Core2Duo, Core2Quad, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7 basically any cpu manufactured by the blue team Intel. This tool was named K10stat for a reason, and that was because it only supports K10 family of processor from AMD; from the old first generation Agena Phenom to the latest Phenom II. Though only the latest Phenom II/Athlon II will benefit most from this superb tweaker. How is this done?

The Buy online “” only tool you need is K10Stat, which can be found by simply Googling “K10Stat”. The first result is the one you should click. Brand “” Download K10STAT141.zip

You might ask, what is P-State?

P-states is a state where your processor able to adjust its frequency and voltage(hence power) based on the workload. The algorithm of adjusting the frequency was hardwired to the processor itself. Basically, what this K10Stat does was modifying the P-states of your processor. Lowering its voltage is the key factor in lowering power consumption.

I’ve got an older Phenom CPU, does K10Stat supports it?
Yes, but don’t expect to get 400MHz idle frequency like what you saw on the screenshot above “” Jelly

AMD Athlon II X3 425

2.7GHz processor running with 3 cores. This is the newest CPU architecture from AMD. Well, not really that new considering it was launched more than a year already. But it was a product that make AMD competitive again at the budget CPU segment. It was actually derived from the AMD Phenom II CPU without the 2MB L3 Cache. What this does was actually sacrificing some performance(on games and multimedia applications mostly) and saving production cost dramatically. But overall, it still fast compared to the older Phenom and Athlon X2 CPU. While you may not see much benefit on the extra 1 core compared to dual core processor, it serves more like future-proof where more applications coming this and next year will take advantage of multicore architecture. Moreover, opening applications at one time like your internet browser(by having few tabs), media player, instant messengers(MSN,Skype,Yahoo),Microsoft Outlook,Word..etc is a smoother experience thanks to the more core count on this Athlon II X3 425. The speed at 2.7GHz is fast enough for normal everyday usage as you definitely won’t notice a difference if it was clocked faster even at 3.7GHz. Price ~ Rm235(USD 73).

2GB DDR3 RAM @ 1333MHz

This is the bare minimum for computers now, be it netbook,notebook or desktop computer. Windows7 is the de-facto Operating System and it uses quite some resources. Very little can you see new computers running with Windows XP. But I still prefer XP for its speed and reliability. The speed for the RAM doesn’t mean very much these days. As far as DDR3 is concern, you’ll see 1066MHz, 1333MHz, 1600MHz and even some enthusiast RAM module rated at 2000MHz. Yeah, it sure does look nice to have a faster speed. But in real world usage – 5% faster performance best case. Some applications Silagra don’t even benefit from the faster clock speed at all. Faster RAM doesn’t make much impact on “” gel the system these days as modern CPUs are very efficient in maximizing the memory bandwidth and lowers the latency as the memory controller is build into the CPU itself. Price ~ RM135(USD 42).

Asus M4A785GTD-V Evo Motherboard

Forget about the newer AMD880G chipset as it was just the AMD785G chipset rebranded as AMD880G minus the core-unlocking features. Anyway, this mobo packed a bunch of features and was priced decently cheap. It was solid as expected from the world no.1 motherboard manufacturer. Features and price much speak for themself.

• Socket AM3
• AMD 785G and SB710 south bridge
• Integrated Radeon HD4200 Graphic Processing Unit(supports OC from 500MHz to 1GHz)
• 4xDDR3 Buy online “” slot, up to 16GB
• 2xPCI express x16 graphic card slot, SLI possible
• 1xPCI express x1 slot
• 3xPCI legacy slot
• 5xSATA2, 1xIDE, 1xe-SATA
• USB2.0, IEEE1394
• Realtek HD codec, support 8-Channel
• Gigabit ethernet
• Price ~ RM345(USD100)

Western Digital 500GB Sata 2

500GB is an overkill for  most basic users. But this is the cheapest and the lowest price per GB hard disk you can find in stores. The 640GB and 1TB are slightly lower in terms of price per Gigabyte. But since we are looking at budget segment, 500GB is the way to go. And ignore the lower capacity ones, as the price per GB for 320GB and 250GB is not justified at its price. Price ~ Rm125(USD 40)

Graphic card

You never need more than the build in GPU(graphic processing unit) on the AMD785G northbridge motherboard chipset. It is actually an ATI Radeon HD4200 class GPU. This GPU is fast enough for light gaming. By overclocking this HD4200, it even matched up to the performance and speed of Nvidia 6800GS or 7300GT DDR3 discreet graphic card. Which means, games like Left4Dead 2, Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Unreal Tournament III setting at medium quality video settings is possible on this chip. This chip is very overclocker friendly which allows you to easily clock 1.0GHz from the default stock speed of 500MHz. That’s a 100% overclock! And don’t worry about frying the chip, it never goes up 45 degrees celcius on a hot sunny day afternoon.  Price? ~ RM 0 (USD 0)

<< back

Roughly 1.5years back, ATI introduced the Radeon 3 series. It was an upgrade and speed bump for the Radeon 2 series which based on the same architecture R600. The 3 series from ATI wasn’t that competitive agaisnt the Geforce 9 series. But ATI lowered their price and compete in the middle and lower end segment. The Radeon 2 series  from my opinion, wasn’t a good product. It was reminiscent of the Phenom K10 architecture. It only starts to shine when AMD/ATI make a transition to 55nm manufacturing process for its 2400 and 2600 graphic processing unit. We can get cheap mainstream graphic card back then like the 8600GT from nvidia or the 3670 from ATI.

In the mid of 2008, is an even better time for graphic market. This is when ATI introduces the R700 family of graphic cards. The spotlight is on ATI 4850, the fastest mainstream at a reasonable price at that time. Performance was close and faster in some cases than the Geforce 9800 GTX which priced higher than the 4850. Nvidia couldn’t afford to lose market and lowered down their high end product to mainstream prices to compete with 4850. From top to bottom, ATI 4 series(R700) own all the performance crown in every segment. It was indeed a good year for ATI and a better year for consumers.

Ok, enough of history lesson. Today we have the Geforce GT200 series, the ATI 4 series (R700) and 5 series (Evergreen). The GT200 wasn’t really shine untill nvidia migrate the manufacturing process to 55nm earlier this year (or the very end of 2008). It was too hot and too expensive to produced using the 65nm. While ATI doesn’t have any new graphic other than the 4770 and 4890 for the first 9months of this year. Therefore, with competitive pricing from nvidia and the newly improved GT260 and GT285 later on, ATI would have to lower their prices as well. A very good first half of 2009 for consumers I would say. To sum up for today’s graphic card market, starting from the oldest to newest graphics family and from low end to high end segment:

ATI R700 family of GPU (Graphic Processing Unit), Radeon 4 series:

• The 4650 and 4670 remained the best bang for buck in the lower segment.
• Scant availability of 4830 means it is in the process of phasing out. And with the price that is almost similiar with 4850. It’s best just to forget the former and get the later for more performance at just slightly few bucks more.
• The same goes to the 40nm Radeon 4 series – 4770 GPU. Worst is, 4770 is getting pricier than 4850.
• The most popular card of 2008 – Radeon 4850 is getting pricier, no thanks to the fact that this card is getting lesser due to low production from ATI. But anyway, is still the best lower mid range card for today’s standard.
• With strong competition from nvidia GTX260, the Radeon 4870 is tied with GTX260 at the same price range. It’s hard to recommend either one, it boils down to which game you played most. But I would recommend 4870 as it is faster in most games, if Phsyx matters for you then GTX260 is the one to go.
• Radeon 4890 while just an overclocked version of Radeon 4870,  was more overclocker friendly than 4870. With 30-40% higher selling price than 4870, 4890 has the upper hand in performance after maximum overclock. But if you’re not into overclocking, it’s best just to settle with nvidia GTX260 or 4870 or maybe the new Evergreen 5850( more on it later).

Nvidia GT200 GPU

• Lower end for these family of GPU is better be left out for recommendation list. However, the newly released GT240 which is based on 40nm and doesn’t require extra power connector is the one to look for. But since it couldn’t be found selling anywhere in stores and with unknown price yet, this segment had AMD’s Radeon 4650/4670 won hands down.
• GTX260 is only worth for your penny if you are looking for GPGPU applications . Else, just go for Radeon 4870.
• In the range of high end GT200, it’s hardly recommendable for anyone. With ATI’s Evergreen took back the performance crown at competitive pricing, I don’t see reasons to get the GTX285. The GTX295 is still reasonable choice as ATI Radeon 5970 is simply overpriced.

ATI Radeon Evergreen GPU (R800)

• There are no low end cards in this family of GPU yet, but expect AMD/ATI to release Redwood early next year (January possibly). My speculation is, given the performance that we see from this new Evergreen architecture, this would make 9800GT and GTX240 irrelevant as Redwood will be position at that price range. It wouldn’t replace 4650/4670 initially, but expect it to do so by end of next year.
• Juniper is the latest mid range card from AMD/ATI. It is basically half of horse power from Cypress(see below). The 5770 is almost as fast as 4870, but in some cases it was actually slower by few frame rates. Well, that doesn’t concern me with an extra added feature like DirectX 11 and bit streaming. 5770 vs GTX260 vs 4870 at the same price range, I definitely be going for 5770.
• The fastest single chip GPU fall into the hands of Cypress. There are two variant, 5870 and the cut down version 5850. Though 5870′s performance is remarkable, but its price is a bit on the high side no thanks to the non-competition from nvidia and the limited stock available. 5850 on the other hand is really the card to get this year, having performance which is faster than nvidia GTX285 with lower price tag. But it faces the similiar problem with 5870 as well, is very hard to get this card and some shops actually marked up the price above market level.
• ATI/AMD decided to name their dual chip Cypress as Hemlock with their high end named 5970. Boasting two 5870 chip in one card, this is a beast. The 5870 is already insanely fast, having two of them makes nightmare to nvidia. While having the fastest frame rates in all games, this card is not for the faint hearted. Prepare to churn out a big hole in your bank account for this card.

So there you have it, a detailed summary of every discrete graphic families available in the market now. But many of you have guessed, why it isn’t a good time to upgrade your 2-4 years old graphic card now?( thats a different story if you are getting a new PC man )  Well, first of all, availability problem causes some of the most popular graphic card to hike up in price. The Radeon 4850 and nvidia GTX260 is actually pricier than few months back. The new Evergreen graphic from ATI is even in the worst case here, the Radeon 5850, 5870 and 5950 have very little available globablly. Inadvertently causing some stores to mark up their prices. While the cheaper variant of the Evergreen; 5770 and 5750 is just slightly better in the position. The lower end card like the Radeon 4670 and 4650 are still available and getting very affordable these days, but if you are upgrading your graphic card, you won’t get these cards right? My advice, is actually worth to play the wait game just for few more months now. This is what will happen: ATI will ramp up production for their Evergreen graphics family in January, the lower end Redwood will show up Q1, nvidia Fermi will show up by March best case scenario. It’s a very interesting 1st half. If Fermi perform half as good as what nvidia claim, that would be already enough to make ATI lower down their pricey Cypress and Hemlock, and price wars ignite. It’s good for the consumer in the end, you see, im not a fan boy in either side. I’m a fan boy of any side which can produce cheap, efficient, and high performing card, and I believe everyone should.

Roughly 1.5years back, ATI introduced the Radeon 3 series. It was an upgrade and speed bump for the Radeon 2 series which based on the same architecture R600. The 3 series from ATI wasn’t that competitive agaisnt the Geforce 9 series. But ATI lowered their price and compete in the middle and lower end segment. The Radeon 2 series  from my opinion, wasn’t a good product. It was reminiscent of the Phenom K10 architecture. It only starts to shine when AMD/ATI make a transition to 55nm manufacturing process for its 2400 and 2600 graphic processing unit. We can get cheap mainstream graphic card back then like the 8600GT from nvidia or the 3670 from ATI.

In the mid of 2008, is an even better time for graphic market. This is when ATI introduces the R700 family of graphic cards. The spotlight is on ATI 4850, the fastest mainstream at a reasonable price at that time. Performance was close and faster in some cases than the Geforce 9800 GTX which priced higher than the 4850. Nvidia couldn’t afford to lose market and lowered down their high end product to mainstream prices to compete with 4850. From top to bottom, ATI 4 series(R700) own all the performance crown in every segment. It was indeed a good year for ATI and a better year for consumers.

Ok, enough of history lesson. Today we have the Geforce GT200 series, the ATI 4 series (R700) and 5 series (Evergreen). The GT200 wasn’t really shine untill nvidia migrate the manufacturing process to 55nm earlier this year (or the very end of 2008). It was too hot and too expensive to produced using the 65nm. While ATI doesn’t have any new graphic other than the 4770 and 4890 for the first 9months of this year. Therefore, with competitive pricing from nvidia and the newly improved GT260 and GT285 later on, ATI would have to lower their prices as well. A very good first half of 2009 for consumers I would say. To sum up for today’s graphic card market, starting from the oldest to newest graphics family and from low end to high end segment:

ATI R700 family of GPU (Graphic Processing Unit), Radeon 4 series:

• The 4650 Buy “”, Buy “”, Buy “” Without Prescription and 4670 remained the best bang for buck in the lower segment.
• Scant availability of 4830 means it is in the process of phasing out. And with the price that is almost similiar with 4850. It’s best just to forget the former and get the later for more performance at just slightly few bucks more.
• The same goes to the 40nm Radeon 4 series – 4770 GPU. Worst is, 4770 is getting pricier than 4850.
• The most popular card of 2008 – Radeon 4850 is getting pricier, no thanks to the fact that this card is getting lesser due to low production from ATI. But anyway, is still the best lower mid range card for today’s standard.
• With strong competition from nvidia GTX260, the Radeon 4870 is tied with GTX260 at the same price range. It’s hard to recommend either one, it boils down to which game you played most. But I would recommend 4870 as it is faster in most games, if Phsyx matters for you then GTX260 is the one to go.
• Radeon 4890 while just an overclocked version of Radeon 4870,  was more overclocker friendly than 4870. With 30-40% higher selling price than 4870, 4890 has the upper hand in performance after maximum overclock. But if you’re not into overclocking, it’s best just to settle with nvidia GTX260 or 4870 or maybe the new Evergreen 5850( more on it later).

Nvidia GT200 GPU

• Lower end for these family of GPU is better be left out for recommendation list. However, the newly released GT240 which is based on 40nm and doesn’t require extra power connector is the one to look for. But since it couldn’t be found selling anywhere in stores and with unknown price yet, this segment had AMD’s Radeon 4650/4670 won hands down.
• GTX260 is only worth for your penny if you are looking for GPGPU applications . Else, just go for Radeon 4870.
• In the range of high end GT200, it’s hardly recommendable for anyone. With ATI’s Evergreen took back the performance crown at competitive pricing, I don’t see reasons to get the GTX285. The GTX295 is still reasonable choice as ATI Radeon 5970 is simply overpriced.

The AMD Sempron 140

Just when you thought Phenom II X3 (or some X2s) are the best bang for buck by having free cores (yeah, literally), hold on, as Sempron “” buy online 140 will likely to be the next bang for buck by having a free “core” unlockable core by “” Jelly costing just half of Phenom II X3, well more than half actually.

Kudos to a Thai moder from Vmodtech. Where by simply using a supported motherboard with Advanced Clock Calibration (ACC), basically any motherboards with SB710 and SB750, you’ll be able to unlock the extra core. Hmm…that’s a great deal considering this cheap babe cost just USD40 (can’t see it anywhere in local stores though )

By tweaking the voltage and maybe installed with a better heatsink, this guy was able to achieve a whopping 3.7GHz! That’s an extra 1GHz from the default of 2.7GHz and another extra 1 core. 1GHz and 1core, seems like a good number to get a winning lucky number for some gambling .

I see a good budget deal by having this unlocked Sempron 140 and 780G as a good combination for internet, simple gaming and multimedia needs. But not much are into overclock or unlock in this case, so it’s better left for budget overclockers.

Anyway, I’ll wrap up here and this link will let you see more details of this Athlon II X2 440 (ya, this is what the unlocked Sempron 140 becomes).

*Sempron 140 is a new budget processor from AMD where it has 1MB of L2cache and clocks at 2.7GHz. It was derived from a faulty Athlon II dual core processor, but of course as many agreed that AMD make some non faulty Athlon II into Sempron 140 for marketing purposes.

The new AMD 785G chipset

The days are numbered when IGP (integrated graphic processor) offers miserable graphic performance. Thanks to AMD, we got a very solid IGP solutions with the 780G chipset released last year. A year later, which is today, AMD bumped up and inject the 780G with extra speed and some tweaks here and there. And voila, we got the 785G.

The new 785G supports any current Phenom II, Athlon II and the older brethren Athlon X2. The 780G will be phased out once 785G is in full production swing. 785G will be positioned between 780G and 790GX, but will eventually replace 780G.

Motherboard with AMD 785G chipset will come with SB710 southbridge. The SB710 southbridge is a an improvement over the SB700 southbridge. It’s basically a SB750 southbridge (which comes with 790GX) minus RAID 5 support, which is not much an issue considering majority of users never use RAID at all.

However, one issue with the 785G is the lack of support for 8 channel LPCM over HDMI. The older 780G and 790GX doesn’t have 8 channel LPCM support and many were hoping AMD to upgrade a little for this new 785G chipset. A bit of disappointment for those planning to do a 7.1 channel HTPC system. Well, for most of us, a 2 channel is already sufficient enough for a great audio experience.

Some of the improvements over 780G are:

• Faster graphics with AMD HD 4200 graphics
• DirectX 10.1 support
• ATI stream technology
• Universal Video Decoder 2.0(UVD)
• AMD powerplay

With AMD HD 4200 build in to 785G, we can expect DirectX10.1 support. However, clockspeed remained the same at 500MHz. But 785G motherboard usually comes with DDR3 sideport memory, so we can see some extra frame rates over 780G.

For those working on Microsoft Powerpoint or using the Cyberlink’s Espresso media converter, you’ll be delighted to have 785G as your working companion. With ATI Stream, expect to see substantial performance improvement where it offloads the processing power to the 40 stream processor at 500MHz each. More than 2times the performance gain without upgrading the processor, how’s that? More applications will be taking advantage of this ATI Stream GPGPU technology in the future.

Watching HD videos just got better with UVD 2.0. With additional features for BD video like picture in picture, dynamic contrast and better HD post processing.

Another big improvement is the AMD Powerplay. It dynamically adjust the clockspeed of the chipset anywhere from 60MHz idle to 500MHz full load. The new Powerplay adjust the clockspeed constantly depending on the work load on the GPU. Think of it as the Cool n Quiet feature of Phenom II. A greener PC indeed.

This new chipset has been released by AMD on the early of August’09 and expect to see the availability at your local store soon. Pairing a budget Athlon II (don’t be fooled by the Athlon name, it’s a Phenom II in disguised without the L3 cache) and 785G can be seen as a perfect couple stealing market shares away from Intel’s G41 and nvidia 9400 IGP solutions, but not for HTPC enthusiast.

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Core i7 CPU Nahalem

If you’ve got a Core i7 system, regardless of the fastest 975 Extreme or the slowest Core i7′s family 920 processor, you may come across of different memory configurations. Few queries may pop up in your head;

-How much RAM capacity do I need?

-Do I need the faster and pricier DDR3 1600MHz RAM?

-Do I need the much hyped triple channel configuration?

The answer for the first question is pretty much straight forward, 2GB is the minimum for a decent system. This holds true for any system you planning to build, be it an AMD Phenom II system, Core 2 Duo or Core i7. 2GB is the minimum standard of today’s. Moreover, the price for 2GB DDR3 just cost a fraction of your total system cost as DDR3′s price has gone rock bottom in recent months (though still 20-40% pricier than DDR2).

The optimum RAM bandwidth that was needed for a Core 2 Duo system would be a 1:1 ratio to the system’s front side bus (FSB) bandwidth. However, this no longer holds true for Core i7 as the architecture is so different and is more reminiscent to AMD’s Phenom/Phenom II design. First, the memory controller was build in the CPU’s die, memory bandwidth is thus increased and latency was reduced. The FSB was being replaced by a faster point to point interconnect – QPI. Thus, you don’t have to run in 1:1 ratio anymore for Core i7.

Theoretically, performance on Core i7 system will increased accordingly with every increase of memory bandwidth. However, in real case scenario, Core i7 needs a balanced memory timing and bandwidth. Faster memory with triple channel doesn’t benefit much for Core i7. It was best to get a dual channel configuration for Core i7 as there were very little performance boost going to triple channel over dual channel configuration. You saved RM125++(USD 35) for opting with dual channel instead of triple channel. A DDR3 1066MHz with 6-6-6-18 timing running in dual channel is the recommended configuration for the best price/performance configuration for Core i7 system.

1600MHz DDR3 cost a lot more and you only get very little or in some cases, no benefit of faster performance for your system. You wouldn’t go wrong with a 2x2GB DDR3 1066MHz RAM for your Core i7. When applications started to benefit from higher bandwidth, you always got the option of getting an additional one stick of RAM to run in triple channel.

So that’s it, Nahalem Core i7 is the king of CPU of today and it will remain so for at least 1.5 years before Intel ‘Tock out’ the next generation CPU architecture end of 2010. Do you need a fast memory for Core i7? Absolutely no, and the much hyped triple channel is much more of a marketing gimmick. Well, maybe it’s time for applications developer to take advantage of the available bandwidth in triple channel configuration.

Have a quick check in Plaza Lowyat price’s list, if you don’t mind to burn a big hole in your wallet, the Core i7 965 Extreme cost RM3950 (about USD 1,000).

Of course, my facts aren’t without reference as I don’t have the opportunity of testing the hardware with my own hands, these are my sources:

Tweaktown

Tom’s Hardware

Ninjalane (synthetic benchmark only, but with very detail view of the RAM bandwidth in different configurations)

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