USA Versus Germany Comparison Table, Test Setup

You wouldn't catch me using that PSU...

any chance of a UK $750 pc?

@Belly - No - I do not want to know how over charged I am for all the parts!

@mi1ez - it does look a bit funky. I'm sure it will be ok for a few months.

Well they should do a UK pc ex VAT then, when I compared the pricing UK with VAT vs US, the pricing with VAT was only slightly higher. Don't forget your sales tax is around 3%, ours is 15%. So if we added 3% of the total to our system then we would get a better answer.

Also ccl has their 4870's for £50 ex vat so a UK pc would own everyone else's since £520's the budget. We'd also be smart enough to use phenom II's instead of Intel's.

The exchange rates and tax will make it hard to balance between countries.

I’m not too sure if this is a good indicator; but a pie chart of percentage of expenditure on the system might be nice.

We spent x% on the cpu and z% on graphics.
Over time we may see that cheap X beats expensive Y. You'll be able to compare different price points around the world.
if it doesn't work at least we get a chart to look at. eveyone likes a good chart.

Lol... Once again as I've been saying since the E6600 took the stage. The Q6600 = 2 E6600's smashed together with zero optimizations. It hogs power, runs hot, and barely shows any benefit for the cost and inefficiency. It's a rushed-to-market-to-beat-out-AMD-Quadcore; a piece of beta-junk, per-watt of power used.

Lets get real here: maybe 1/20th of you are actually going to be doing heavy media encoding etc. The majority of you all will be gaming, and playing around on the web, doing some work here and there: thus ruling out the fantasy and impulsive thoughts "OMG I'll use it! I've got all kinds of vid clips (pron) to 'edit!'" HAHA yeah right, you'll be editing those pron clips you got from torrents/alt.bin etc. In order words the Q6600 is nothing but a marketing gimmick, a market-beta-test on who'll be game to buy a "Quad core" before they actually pushed forward to release the true Quadcore Penryn. AMD was the 1st "true" quad, it's just too bad their architecture and hyped was just that... hype.

Course everyone fanboy'd toward Q6xxx’s, only to see, soon as they did — Intel comes out with the FINAL version of the Quadcore = Penryn. Glad I waited it out... I loved seeing all the noobs suddenly trying to dump their Prescott mirroring Q6600s on the forums and Ebay: "OMG BUY THIS G0-STEPPING! 3.4-6GHZ!" Yeah it still sucked per dollar spent and OC'd, the Q6600 IS the Prescott of chips. LMFAO you guys got had.

So what have we learned from this shoot out? SAVE your MONEY and buy a Penryn, OC the heck out of it, and take that saved money and get a better vid card or a DECENT PSU… Some no-name, untested PSU = Russian Roulette with your system. The PSU IS the most crucial and important part of a computer system, for it can DESTROY everything it’s connected to. Germans = You guys are NOT building computers like your cars… OR considering the high cost and unreliability of said machines = I guess you are. BMW’s rock — if you can afford the maintenance, haha.

I think that if you have a Socket AM2+ system then, a Phenom II (including the x3) together with say Radeon 4870 would look very favourible in so far as getting similar results as these new system builds. Maybe throw a good PSU into the mix as well, just to be on the safe side.

Rant TIME! #2...

Hell, you know what? Actually I will concede a little and root for the Phenom-II etc. We ALL NEED AMD TO DO WELL or else = No price war = price HIKE as far as Intel is concerned. That's been shown, as soon as AMD fell over = that magical Penryn "delay" happened, prices sky rocketed! $190 is a "deal" for a chip now? That used to be the "FX" line of AMD price territory, but it's just "entry level" with Intel — Ridiculous?! Now we're being force-fed ~$200 mobos by review sites as if theres nothing wrong or odd about paying TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS for a system board that does WHAT, that much better than yester-year's boards? Where's the review site OUTRAGE over these continually escalating prices? Please someone from the THG staff, please tell us what justifies paying near $100 more for a mobo Vs $100 base price mobo platform. Are these new "top" end mobos (200 is not top end these days haha wtf?) actually PERFORMING 100% better for 100% more money???? NO? Then wtf do you continually push them as if they are so wonderful? You're contributing to the suckers market too ya know.

Yes you gotta make revenue and profit blah blah, but you're doing just as much disservice to your readership as the people setting these prices. Stop candy-coating reviews of POS beta-ware mobos that don't come from the factory READY TO RUN. If not = DISQUALIFY them from the review. Bet that would PO your boss and the manufacture that sent you them Golden-Samples? What a con.

Please someone enlighten me, wtf we're paying nearly 200% above top mobo prices a handful of years past? Are these boards offering superior audio Vs my old AC'97? NOPE. What about superior onboard ummm, hrmm... Heat sinks! THATS IT! The cool new (old news) copper heat pipes! Yes, yes that's it folks — THAT is what makes them worth it! How about for $200 I get the same mobo, just repackaged with shiny copper tubes and fins PLUS A HARDWARE RAID CARD ADD ON like they did with the AC'97 PCI boards? That would be worth $200 imho!

This is just sickening to watch — year after year of this fake/phoney price war, PSU prices sky rocketing b/c of SLI and gamer-zoids, mobo and cpu prices following suit. The only thing that hasn't is DDR2, it's dropped like a stone in favor of barely better performing 6GB kits DDR3. SIX GIGABYTES of ram... What in the F*CKOSESU do any of us need with that much ram? Lol guess we're all going to pretend to start running VM machines emu'ing games and OSX — all at the same time! Don't forget to toss in "Quad" SLI for all the flight-sim we'll be conned into thinking we'll pilot into.

So lets summarize: 4-Cores $200 for Pron "editing," $200 Mobo for "gaming" or running your own "super computer node," (LMFAO!), Beta-testing for the eventual working firmware release .9.9.9.9.Final-RAZOR. $200 Vid card for "gaming," and brute-force password cracking (all those PW'd rapidshare rars you found through google searching), $100 Kilowatt PSU for "Gaming?" $100 for recycled, lowest grade "aluminum" box to hold overpriced case fans made in China/Taiwan. Dual raptors RAID 0 for "gaming" and assured data-loss. $150 for 1.5TB file shredder from SuckGate. $250 for DDDDDRRR12GB ram kit for pretending to play the happy (lonely and in denial), isolated, stay-in-on-the-weekends, anti-social Nix Admin/”gamer” aka RTFM braggart… This is all adding up to $1000 worth of crap…. See you all soon for my next reality-rant!

PS- Don't take this seriously... Just like we'll all pretend to actually use these $1000 machines to their fullest capabilities, before we eventually decide it's not enough and we need to play UPGRADE-CHARADES!

GO AMD!

I AGREE 100% with the avobe poster
shits gettingout of hand as he points out

Try this one for the Canadian Contingent

Coolermaster Centurion 534 ATX Tower Case 5X5.25 1X3.5 4X3.5INT Black 460W PS
$92.82

Xigmatek HDT-S1283 Direct Touch 3 Heatpipe Heatsink AM2 LGA775 S754 S939 S940 W 120MM PWM Fan
$36.99

Gigabyte Radeon HD 4850 625MHZ 512MB 1.92GHZ DDR3 PCI-E CrossFireX

$177.91

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 3.5IN 500GB SATA2 8.5MS 7200RPM 32MB Cache NCQ Hard Drive OEM

$69.99

NCIX Gaming Bundle Deal EVGA 790I Ftw Digital Motherboard & 4GB DDR3-1600 RAM

$269.99
1 x EVGA nForce 790I Ftw Digital Power LGA775 DDR3 3PCI-E16 2PCI-E1 2PCI SATA2 Sound GBLAN Motherboard
1 x Aeneon Xtune AXH760UD10-16H-K-2G 2GB 2X1GB DDR3-1600 CL9-9-9 240PIN Dual Channel Memory Kit
1 x Aeneon Xtune AXH760UD10-16H-K-2G 2GB 2X1GB DDR3-1600 CL9-9-9 240PIN Dual Channel Memory Kit

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 Quad Core Processor LGA775 2.66GHZ Yorkfield 1333FSB 6MB Retail Box

$288.98

LG GH22NS30 Black DVD+RW 22X8X16 DVD-RW 22X6X16 DL 16X/12X 2MB SATA OEM

$27.99


$964.67 Can

$762.00 US

Perfect scenario to bench an AMD in all of it!
It could even outperform the above setups for $750,who knows?
It's been too long since we've had a decent Intel/AMD race; though be it on older Intel gear.

The $750 is about the average student's budget for a gamingpc for the coming 3 years!

buy an xbox. its 200 pounds.

I had a Q6600 and changed this to the E8500. With the Q6600 overclocked to 3.2 and a Nvidia 9600 i got a 25% increase in the up FPS runnin 3D Mark 2006, From 80+ to 95+. Once I put the E8500 in I got a standard performance of about 95 FPS and when overclocked to 3.6Ghz got another 25% increase to about 110+ FPS. so from Stock Q6600 2.4 to E8500 Overclocked to 3.6 i managed to get 30+ FPS without changing my Nvidia Card. Managed to sell the Q6600 for about £20 less than te new E8500 and I can not think of a better upgrade cost / performance than that.

stil owuldliek to see a uk based one just so i can go see its not me ebing a cheapskate things realy are overpiced here XD, and ive found the q6600 better than the e6600 as it has 4 cores which i regluly max out, i have alotless slow down in games and well i think its the beter choice for me, but people are entilted to there own oppions

ps. if u are a cheapskate go amd, go for a tri core and hack it to a quad cough cough

Australia is closer to asia than Germany and the USA - we get everything cheaper.

wouldent a Ausus p5kpl/1600 cheaper and there for you could have bought a better graphics card....