Price/Performance of Low/Medium/High Cost PCs

Tom's Hardware previously had a five-day System Builder Marathon, where they built three systems: Low-cost (US$837), Medium-cost (US$1,931), and High-cost (US$3,400) PCs. All PCs were then subjected to overclocking on marathon day 4. Day 5 was judgement day, where Tom's Hardware tries to choose the Price/Performance winner.

"According to these charts, you'll have to pay nearly three times as much for a system to double its performance. That's actually a little better than we expected, but it still drives home the point that the lowest-cost system will always provide the best "value". ... But what is value? The low-cost system wasn't quite capable of playing certain games at good quality and moderate resolutions. Similarly, buyers who actually need extra performance in applications will find that they can finish twice as much work per unit of time on the high-cost system. If you're looking for excuses to splurge, you now have two good ones." [Tom's Hardware | System Builder Marathon: Price/Performance]

Low-cost PC (US$837) specs [via Tom's Hardware]:

• AMD Quad Core Phenom 9500 processor
• Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard
• Wintec Ampo DDR2 PC2-6400 2GB RAM
• HIS Radeon 3870 ICEQ Turbo graphics card
• Western Digital Caviar 500 GB HDD
• Sony Optiarc DVD-RW

Medium-cost (US$1,931) PC specs [via Tom's Hardware]:

• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 processor
• Asus P5N-T Deluxe motherboard
• Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 PC2-6400 - 4 GB RAM
• EVGA GeForce 8800GTX, 768 MB graphics card
• 1x Western Digital Raptor 150 GB, 1x Western Digital Caviar 500 GB HDDs
• Sony Optiarc DVD-RW

High-cost (US$3,400) PC specs [via Tom's Hardware]:

• Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 processor
• Asus Striker II Formula motherboard
• Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 PC2-6400 - 4 GB RAM
• 2x Gigabyte GeForce 8800GTX - GV-NX88X768H-RH graphics cards
• 2x Western Digital Caviar WD7500AAKS HDDs
• Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology SH-203B DVD-RW
• NEC 1.44 MB Floppy Drive

As Tom's Hardware puts it, PC performance really has a price. The beauty of building your own PC is that you set the price and specs, according to your needs.

Technorati : build, pc, performance, price, review