What Hardware Should I Buy? - July 2009

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When only the best will do there’s a raft of hardware out there to cater to your needs, providing premium performance for a premium price tag. Without going crazy and losing our heads, we've really gone to town to maximise this set up because even with a high budget, we’re not out to waste money and building a top end system isn’t as simple as just buying the most expensive components out there.

Be wary before you unleash the credit card though and really consider if you’re really going to get the most out of this kit. The PC hardware market is one of diminishing returns – the more money you spend, the smaller the improvements between hardware options becomes, and the poorer the value you get as a result.

However, if you’ve just bought that 24" or 30" monitor, surround sound speaker kit and nice comfy leather chair with foot rest (usually called the sub) and are looking for some kick ass performance that won't wait for anyone, this is what we consider the very best hardware in each component class.

Graphics Card

First Choice: ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2
UK Pricing: £240.35 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $349.99 (ex. Tax)

We've gone back to a single ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 this month due to its epic price drop to just over £240. It makes more sense to buy than a pair of GTX 260s that are slightly more expensive in comparison. In the past we've shied away from recommending dual GPU solutions following the technology's reliance on driver profiles for the latest games, and the inherent diminishing returns on multi-GPU, but for the price it's certainly hard to ignore the HD 4870 X2, and for 24 or 30in monitor gaming there is no single card capable of generating the FPS needed for very high image quality or extremely large resolutions.

CPU

First Choice: Intel Core i7 920 D0
UK Pricing: £209.54 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $279.99 (ex. Tax)

While the Core i7 940, 965 and 975 processors are still much too expensive, it's the Core i7 920 processor that's really caught our eye with its fantastic overclocking performance making it very attractive for high end users. Shipping at 2.66GHz, we're currently running a Core i7 920 at 4GHz completely stable and usable in the labs here at bit-tech, and over 4.2GHz on air isn't unheard of.

You'll need a decent third party CPU cooler to tame upwards of 135W of heat produced though, especially if overclocking to upwards towards 4GHz, but the promise of what is a very considerable, and otherwise free, performance gain should be motivation enough to jump into the BIOS and get tweaking.

If you can find one, grab the new D0 stepping specifically. It's widely regarded as being not only a little cooler, but also more overclockable, eking out a few hundred more MHz if the motherboard is up to it.

Motherboard

First Choice:Asus P6T Deluxe V2
UK Pricing: £195.50 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $269.99 (ex. Tax)

The latest version (#2) of the P6T Deluxe we recommend month on month has dropped the useless and expensive SAS connectors in favour of a cheaper design without them. At under £200 it's not the cheapest of X58 motherboards but it's a more acceptable and approachable price for a board that overclocks extremely well, has plenty of features, including SLI, and has always been solid as a rock for us.

That's not to say others are not good - it's just the Asus P6T has consistently worked well for us and, in next month's issue, our Custom PC brethren have tested and recommend the V2, so we recommend it here also.

Memory

First Choice: 6GB Triple Channel Memory Kit - PC3-12800 (1,600MHz)
UK Pricing: £80.86 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $99.99 (ex. Tax)

We've opted for a 1,600MHz kit for under £80/$100 that should provide plenty of performance and overclocking overhead. Ludicrous memory speeds up to and beyond 2,000MHz are available, but because Core i7 already has massive bandwidth from its triple-channel topology, we don't feel the faster kits offer any more unless you're going for the benchmarketing records. Personally, we'd just prefer a fast, stable overclock and to get some big screen gaming done!

We'd avoid the 3GB conundrum entirely: 6GB (or more if you need) is a must for high performance, and large multitasking environments. Prices have really tumbled for 6GB DDR3 kits in the past couple of months, and these particular kits soften the blow of the increased CPU and motherboard cost, while still yielding great performance.