Introduction

With the continued price war between AMD and Intel, ATI (now AMD) and NVIDIA we, the end users, have been blessed with lower than ever hardware prices; the proof of is the article we are writing here today. For a mere 315 euro we were able to pick up a complete system at Dollarshops.eu.



Here’s what we got for €315:

- AMD Athlon 3800+ AM2 CPU
- Jetway M26GTM with onboard 6150 VGA Motherboard
- 1Gb DDR2 PC2-6400 Memory
- 320GB Sata HDD
- Casetek V.Pandora ATX Mid Tower Case
- Sirtek 310W Power Supply
- LiteOn HH Lightscribe 20X DVD Writer

Optionally for an extra € we added the following options and check their impact on performance:

- Upgrade to 2Gb DDR2 +€30
- Upgrade VGA NVIDIA 8600 GT 256Mb +€96

Dollarshops.eu offers a nice service, they build the system with the components you choose and send it to you with registered postal service, all this costs a mere €15 on top of the price of the system, seeing as the shipping charges alone easily match this price, they are building the systems for free.

The system by default comes without OS installed, on request you can buy the OS of your choice and have it installed by them. We asked them to preload with Windows XP.

Packaging

The box arrived few days after it was sent out, they used the original cardboard box of the case, a Casetek branded product.



Let’s open the package ->

Outside & Inside look

The Casetek V.Pandora is not a high end model, but does offer a few nice features for the price; Dollarshops does not include any case fans by default, but there is room to fit a 120mm in the front and one in the back.



The excess cable wiring was tucked away nicely to keep the airflow path clear inside, as you see in the photo below, the motherboard is not full size ATX, this small board does limit your upgrade options. The Jetway board has only 2x SATA connectors and 1x PATA, you have 2x DDR2 slots, one x16 PCIe slot and 2 PCI slots.



The AM2 processors is installed with the default AMD aluminium heatsink; The PSU model is a Sirtec rated at only 310W, seeing as this is a low end budget system we weren’t expecting much higher;




The DVD Writer is fitted behind the front hidden 5.25” bays, two of them are provided, pushing the button spits out the DVD tray smoothly. Overall the case is of ok quality, while it’s clear that this is a budget case, we did not find any extremely sharp edges or signs of weak construction.



Connection wise the AM2 motherboard offers support for PS/2 mouse and keyboard, LPT port for older printer, COM1 serial port , 4 USB ports, onboard 10/100 network and line-in/line-out/microphone jack. In the photos above you also saw another 2 extra USB ports at the front of the case (these are hooked up) and also front panel audio (mic/headphones)



Time to power on ->

Choice of System and BIOS options

With AMD and Intel providing similar priced models all over the performance spectrum it was interesting to see an AMD CPU inside this system. Price wise the Intel Pentium E2140 will surely give this AMD a run for its money, at a similar budget. We hope Dollarshops will provide an Intel based budget system in the future to give the end user more choice.

The AMD AM2 system comes with a Jetway motherboard featuring onboard VGA based on the NVIDIA 6150 GPU, a 6 series video card at a time where we are waiting for the 9 series and are enjoying the 8 series does mean we have low expectations when it comes down to gaming. For office usage however the GPU does meet requirements for running Windows Vista with Aero enabled, and in our tests the system could handle HD content up to 720p (x264 codec) without issue.



Before we start our performance benchmarks, let’s dive into the BIOS to see if this budget board offers any tweaking options. Scanning the Phoenix Award bios we notice an interesting menu choice in the right column, the “Power User Overclock Settings”



Seeing such a menu in the BIOS of a budget motherboard is quite surprising, the amount of available adjustments is almost on par with that of more expensive AMD enthusiast motherboards. You can separate control PCIE clock, select negative memory dividers, change CPU ratio and vcore, adjust LDT, Northbridge and DRAM voltage.

PCIE clock up to 150Mhz

FSB up to 400

DRAM at 400/533/667/800

Vcore up to 1.5v and possibility to add another 14.5%

LDT voltage up to 1.23v

NB voltage 1.37v

DRAM voltage up to an impressive 2.42v

Detailed options for the memory timings can be found under another submenu:



DRAM configuration screen is quite complete, at the bottom (not shown in in photo) you can set Command rate 1/2T



The VGA settings menu displayed an interesting option:



The default speed of the 6150 GPU is 525Mhz, the BIOS allows you to change it from 400~625 in 1Mhz steps!



Last section of the BIOS worth mentioning is the PC Health sub menu, where you can control the CPU fan, allowing you to let the fan spin slower when the CPU is idle and thereby reducing overall noise.



Setting it to Idle Temp 50°C and Full Speed 65°C had favorable results. Speaking of which, time for some performance tests ->

Overclocking

The system arrived pre-installed with Windows XP as was requested, the optional 1gb DDR2 stick and 8600 GT VGA were also installed. Once in Windows we loaded up CPU-Z to get an idea of the CPU speed we are dealing with:



At 2400Mhz the AMD Athlon 64 CPU is far from slow and raw CPU tests will turn out favorable, do note that this is not an X2 AMD CPU, so only 1 core. With more software taking advantage of dual core systems, a future upgrade to an X2 CPU would further increase performance.

The DDR2 memory is running at relaxed timings at PC2-6400 speed, this is value ram after all:



We delved into the BIOS options, increase vcore slightly to 1.45v and started increasing the FSB until the system became unstable, then we lowered it again until we could successfully complete our benchmarks without issue. We did not change the default AMD heatsink, so more can be had if we opted to install a 3rd party heatsink. With the current configuration we got a free 300Mhz:


AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Overclocked to 2700Mhz

The memory was now running at higher speed without trouble:

Performance Tests

We compared the system running with three different configurations:

• Default configuration, 3800+ @ 2400Mhz, 1Gb Ram, Onboard VGA
  
• 3800+ @ 2400Mhz with 2Gb and 8600 GT VGA
  
• 3800+ @ 2700Mhz with 2Gb and 8600 GT VGA

The price difference between the standard configuration (€315) and 2gb/8600GT upgrade (+€126) is approximately 40%, let’s see if that increased cost is worth it.

Let’s start of with the free benchmark suite from Futuremark, PCMark05 is system benchmark which also relies on 3D graphics for one section of the test:



With more system memory and dedicated VGA you get an increase of ~34%, not bad at all. Overclocking the CPU does have a large impact here as the PCMark05 test includes encoding and compression tests, up ~44% compared to stock.

Next up are two CPU sensitive benchmarks, both calculate Pi up to millions of digits:



Here the impact of a faster video card or more system memory is absent, only overclocking can help this test.

Time for our first 3D action:



The onboard VGA is good for 2D, but that’s where it ends.

Our last synthetic benchmark is the complete system benchmark from BAPCO, SYSmark 2007 Preview uses a large collection of application to measure the performance of a system when different tasks are done. The global score is your “Sysmark” but it is split up in 4 subcategories: Video Creation relies on Adobe Premiere and similar software to gauge performance, E-Learning uses flash/java, 3D modeling renders a few scenes, Office Productivity combines spreadsheets with word documents and powerpoint presentations. This benchmark is quite advanced and takes some time to compete. Dual core systems will benefit in some tests here as multi-tasking is often used.

Here’s the result with the Budget system from Dollarshops.eu



Multi tasking benefits from the extra memory, pure CPU bound applications like 3D rendering show less impact. Overclocking the CPU shows the biggest gain, as expected.

Performance Tests Continued

While we know the onboard VGA is no high flyer, we still were interested to see if it could run one of the more recent games.

How about FarCry? This game was a smash hit when it was released and people are not anticipating the spiritual successor, most people have 17” LCD or larger so we tested at 1024x768 and 1280x1024, native resolution of most common TFT screens now:



Right, so with high detail at these resolutions the onboard VGA is hopeless, however with a €97 upgrade to 8600 GT video card you can play at respectable frame rates. Only if you reduce the resolution and detail will you be able to play Farcry with the onboard VGA:



At 800x600 and low detail it doesn’t look pretty, at 1024x768 it’s slightly better, but ugly in comparison what you can achieve with the dedicated VGA.

Another popular game we tested was FEAR. We started of with medium graphics detail and 800x600 resolution, then we stressed the 8600 GT by increasing detail to high and running at 1600x1200.



The NVIDIA 8600 GT breezes through the benchmark at 800x600, but does struggle at the higher detail and 1600x1200 resolution; The onboard VGA is again underpowered, only by selecting the lowest detail setting you can get somewhat fluent frame rates:

Noise, Temperatures and Power Usage

The performance of this budget system is not bad at all, for office usage and internet browsing the standard 1gb and onboard VGA are more than sufficient in providing a fluent experience; If you are a gamer adding a budget friendly 8600 GT and extra GB DDR2 into the mix allows you to play older games at high detail as well as get playable frame rates with new titles.

Of course all this is no good if the system sounds like jet taking off, so we did some noise and temperature tests to see if you can hear yourself think when this budget system is powered on. It’s not uncommon to find inadequate cooling, or overly noisy fans in a budget system, making you doubt your purchase the moment you power the system on.



We placed a dBA meter at close distance in front of the case and measured the peak noise levels during different situations:

Bootup: when you push the power button the PSU and CPU fan spin up to their maximum speed and it’s noisy, but this drops back down quickly, only lasts 1-2 seconds.

DVD: reading/writing a DVD does generate quite a bit of noise, there’s not much you can here unfortunately.

Load 3D: the fan on the Sparkle 8600 GT is noticeable when you start up a game.

Load 2D & Idle: The fan on the AMD heatsink spins at the same speed whether the CPU is at idle or under load, at 44.6dBA the system is not dead quiet, but hardly noticeable once you are concentrating on a document or browsing the web.

Load 2D# & Idle#: Here we set the SmartFan option in the BIOS to only let the CPU fan run at full speed if the CPU hit 65°C, as you can see from the results, it was a very positive impact, at idle the system is only ~4dBA over ambient, and this at very close distance!

Here are the temperature results we obtained stressing the system for one hour with the 8600GT and 2gb installed, expect the results without those extra goodies to be slightly lower.



None of the components are overheating in this case, and this is without exhaust fan, only 1 fan in the PSU! Overclocking the CPU does have an impact on the temperatures of course, 300Mhz extra and increased vcore push it close to 70°C, but running stable still.

Our last test covers the power usage of this system, since it’s not a high end machine and is powered by a modest 310W PSU we were expecting low numbers:



Just plugging the power cable in the wall outlet causes the system to draw at least 18W at all times; With the onboard VGA and 1gb we see the lowest load and idle numbers, as expected; but even with the 8600 GT and extra DDR2 installed the power usage remains reasonable topping out at 186W when we overclock the CPU and run intensive 3D benchmarks.

Conclusive Thoughts

We’re happy to see such performance numbers in our tests from system which costs less than €500; the time to get that small office/low end game PC for your family is definitely here. Dollarshops has chosen the right components to build a system which won’t put a hole in your pocket.

Without much extra’s you can turn this system into a HTPC or small file server; the overall cost will remain low, for only €126 more you get a dedicated gaming VGA card, which can also serve for HDMI HTPC purposes and 1gb extra memory to speed up multi tasking.



Since Dollarshops send us their Budget system for test they have informed us that they upgraded the motherboard to the Jetway M2A692-GDG which features an ATI based onboard VGA solution which is slightly faster than the one we tested here today. They also now include a 370W Sirtec PSU, the price of the system remains the same, €315 is a hard price to beat!

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