X-bit labs

Christmas Purchase Guide from X-bit labs.

Category: Other

by Anton Shilov

[ 12/23/2003 | 12:48 PM ]

In an attempt to help X-bit labs’ readers to acquire only quality, fast and reliable hardware during holiday season, we have done a lot of work doing reviews of the most exciting PC components we had managed to obtain.

There are four processors that compete for the performance crown these days. Those are two titans – the AMD Athlon 64 FX-51 and Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.20GHz, available now at pricing from $700 to $1000, as well as two more affordable parts – Intel Pentium 4 3.20GHz and AMD Athlon 64 3200+. 

If you are not sure about your future Socket 478 mainboard, you should check our “Mainboards” section – we have got quite some reviews for this type of products this year. If you are going to have a 754-pin AMD64 processor, head over to our 13-way Socket 754 review. 

Just in case you are not sure about the most suitable chipset for you, check out our chipset reviews:

• For Intel Pentium 4: Intel 875P, Intel 865PE, Intel 848P, VIA PT880, SiS655, ATI RADEON 9100 IGP.
• For AMD Athlon XP: NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400, NVIDIA nForce2 400, NVIDIA nForce2 IGP, VIA KT600, SiS748.
• For AMD Athlon 64: SiS755, NVIDIA nForce3 Pro 150, VIA K8T800.

Just in case you are looking for quality memory modules for your new PC rig, try to find the useful information in our “Memory” section. I would recommend you to read “Choosing Optimal Memory to Match Intel Pentium 4 Processor” and “Corsair TwinX1024-4000PRO DDR500 Memory Review”.

There are loads of graphics cards options for you this Christmas. There are the most expensive fastest RADEON 9800 XT and GeForce FX 5950 Ultra. There are less expensive, but also very rapid RADEON 9800 PRO and GeForce FX 5900. Finally, each of the leading developers has a couple of performance mainstream options: the RADEON 9600 XT and RADEON 9600 PRO from ATI as well as GeForce FX 5700 Ultra and GeForce FX 5600 Ultra from NVIDIA. To compare them all, check out our “The Fastest Graphics Cards of 2003” article. 

To get your system complete, you will need data storage devices, namely hard disk drives. There is a useful roundup of modern 7200rpm HDDs as well as loads more articles in our “Storage” section.

Not sure about the pricing of desired hardware? Head over to “Check Prices” section provided by Dealtime.Xbitlabs.com to find the lowest possible pricing on the best possible PC components. 

Done all your buys? Vote for the best products of 2003 in our “Best of 2003” poll!

Have not found what you were looking for? Check out our “Advanced Search” option.