Reviews - £600-£700 to spend on a base unit? MESH and ARBICO battle for top honours

[HEXUS]

An overclocked Core 2 Quad vs. AMD Phenom II. Find out which is best.

Read more.

[kalniel]

Your gaming tests seem very heavily weighed towards nVidia cards - you pick a rare openGL-based game and also use the 3dmark Vantage test which nVidia cards 'cheat' on by using the full GPU to aid the CPU score (an unrealistic scenario given that while playing games you'd expect the GPU to be spending some time actually drawing things).

I'd be interested to see either the graphics score on its own from the Vantage test, or prevention of this 'cheat' by disabling hardware physX acceleration.

[Terbinator]

I'd expect an i7 system for £700.

[KingORoff]

I'd expect an i7 system for £700.

I doubt it, i7 920's are still £200+, and the lowest priced mobo is still about £150 - so if you add in all the essentials (including the OS), it'd still cost more.

920 ~ £210
X58 Mobo ~ £150
6GB DDR 3 ~ £80
Vista Home Basic (64bit) ~ £65
GTX 260 ~ £110
500GB HDD ~ £40
Optical Disk (DVD-RW) ~ £20
Case (Antec 300) ~ £46
600W PSU (Corsair 650W)~ £70

= £791, or about £800

You could go cheaper with some components, but to be honest I doubt think you could chop an extra £100 no matter how cheap you go.

[Terbinator]

As you said you could go cheaper, but even so when you factor in the £50-100 difference give or take the i7 is a lot more bang for the buck.

[Tarinder]

Your gaming tests seem very heavily weighed towards nVidia cards - you pick a rare openGL-based game and also use the 3dmark Vantage test which nVidia cards 'cheat' on by using the full GPU to aid the CPU score (an unrealistic scenario given that while playing games you'd expect the GPU to be spending some time actually drawing things).

I'd be interested to see either the graphics score on its own from the Vantage test, or prevention of this 'cheat' by disabling hardware physX acceleration.

Vantage is Direct3D so we've added an OGL title to balance things up. Historically, results from ET:QW have tallied up well with the HEXUS.bang4buck. CoH, for example, gives NVIDIA a much higher comparative score.

The complete test is used so that Joe Average can get quick idea on their own comparative performance, but we'll publish the GPU score in subsequent reviews. I'll add them to this one too.

[Merson]

As you said you could go cheaper, but even so when you factor in the £50-100 difference give or take the i7 is a lot more bang for the buck.

That quote for the i7 system is still not including the profit these companies need to make from each PC. They don't do it for free.

Mesh do sell a i7 system for £799 but the specs are much much lower then the one quoted above.

One of similar spec (Ati 4890) is £999.

[Steve A]

Hmm both have nice cable jobs

[kalniel]

Vantage is Direct3D so we've added an OGL title to balance things up.

But there's a known problem with Vantage though, as below:

The complete test is used so that Joe Average can get quick idea on their own comparative performance,

But unless you disable hardware physX it's not comparative between ATI and nVidia so using it to compare systems with different graphics card manufacturers gives misleading results if you're trying for a quick idea.

But thanks for getting back to us about the points.

[Terbinator]

That quote for the i7 system is still not including the profit these companies need to make from each PC. They don't do it for free.

Mesh do sell a i7 system for £799 but the specs are much much lower then the one quoted above.

One of similar spec (Ati 4890) is £999.

But i wouldn't be buying my £700-799 from a company id build it myself, and so id expect me to get an i7 rig in that price bracket.

[kalniel]

But i wouldn't be buying my £700-799 from a company id build it myself, and so id expect me to get an i7 rig in that price bracket.

So in what way is that relevant to an article reviewing computers you can buy from two companies? Unless you also provide computers for sale where you don't charge anything on top of the BoM

I guess any article talking about anything pre-built always gets at least one 'you can do it cheaper yourself' reply

[Terbinator]

I guess any article talking about anything pre-built always gets at least one 'you can do it cheaper yourself' reply

Yes and no

What i mean is that think i could put an i7 in that bracket so why they can't i don't know, after all im sure they would get there components for a lower price than me. And yeah, build your own Im sure if you know what to look for on a custom pc site you can put to gether your own rig, its only like matching pieces of LEGO.

[Merson]

But it's not. You can easily say that when you have been doing it for years like 99% of us on here have. For a complete novice its a mine field, for example that MESH site was showing core i7's with 4/8GB of RAM. When we all know you get Tri-kits of 3/6/12GB. There's plenty of things that those sites never delve into. There's the different buses available different cable connections, even installing an OS, the list goes on.

The customize part of those sites are for people who know what they want but either lack the knowledge to do it themselves or just don't want the hassle. For those who do decide to customize without knowledge everything is set out in a manner that is easy for anyone to understand. Add money for better equipments and subtract for not so good. I bet 60% plus of there orders are from people who select from the pre-made options without any customizations at all.

[gaz256]

As you said you could go cheaper, but even so when you factor in the £50-100 difference give or take the i7 is a lot more bang for the buck.

personally i would rather go with the phenom ii in that price range as you could get a top line mobo for a good 20 quid cheaper than the worst i7 mobo, then youve still got a load of cash spare to spend on gpu or cooler etc