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The Chip That Changed the World: AMD's 64-bit FX-51, Ten Years Later
Dputiger writes "It's been a decade since AMD's Athlon 64 FX-51 debuted — and launched the 64-bit x86 extensions that power the desktop and laptop world today. After a year of being bludgeoned by the P4, AMD roared back with a vengeance, kicking off a brief golden age for its own products, and seizing significant market share in desktops and servers."
Although the Opteron was around before, it cost a pretty penny. I'm not sure it's fair to say that the P4 was really bludgeoning the Athlon XP though (higher clock speeds, but NetBurst is everyone's favorite Intel microarchitecture to hate). Check out the Athlon 64 FX review roundup from 2003.
Toms got outed years ago as being paid by Intel. If you want good, unbiased reviews of games and gaming hardware, go to HardOCP.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
I just tried your method. Basically went to Newegg and sorted items by cost and picked the ones that were approximately in the ranges you specified.
CPU: $569.99 Intel Core i7-3930K. 327 reviews, 5/5 average. 3.2 GHz
Motherboard: $232.99 Asus Sabertooth Z77. 770 reviews, 4/5 average.
Oops, wrong socket.
Motherboard: $224.99 Asus P9X79 LE. 47 reviews, 4/5 average.
Video card: Hmm, lots there in the $700 - $1000 range. What about best rated in $200 to $300 range? $259.99 ASUS GTX660. 2GB. 128 reviews, 5/5 average. No idea how fast it is compared to other cards, though.
Power supply: No wattage spec listed for video card. Hmm. Highest rated in $100 - $200 range is: $109.99 Rosewill Capstone-750. 160 reviews, 5/5 average. Surely 750W is enough. RAM: $79.99 G.Skill Ripjaws 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3. 1725 reviews, 5/5. Times two, for 16 GB RAM.
SSD storage: $454.00 (!) Samsung 840 Pro Series 512 GB.
Cooling: Uh oh. Newegg lists four different categories for LGA 2011 socket compatible CPU coolers. Motherboard description has no more detail than "LGA 2011 socket." Time to research...
Case: Featured item is $59.99 Rosewill Challenger-US ATX mid-tower. Sure, why not. 321 reviews, 4/5.
Time spent: About 25 minutes, not counting whatever research on heatsinks I'd have to do.
Total cost: $2071.92. Holy cow!
Okay, make that a $225.99 Samsung 256 GB.
New total cost: $1843.91.
And I still don't have a monitor or CPU cooler. No idea whether the above items are compatible either.
IIRC, Dell's really nice 27" monitor is $999.
So $2842?
Still need keyboard and mouse...
Nah, forget it. As a computer software nerd, but not a PC building nerd, I'll just go with a 27" iMac for $1999. Granted only an i5 CPU and 8 GB, but comes with a great OS and a gorgeous 27" monitor. (BTO with i7, 16GB and 256GB SSD bumps the price to $2599.) It has a GTX 775M instead of GTX 660 - no idea which is faster. At least I know all the components will work together, and they're properly supported by the OS.
Not that I meant that as a criticism of the DIY route. It's just a hobby that's not for me.