| The Turbo Gaming System
by Leonard "Viking1" Hjalmarson |
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A few months back we built a dual celeron system around the Shuttle 649A, and then a budget system based on the Abit BX6. The third article in the series recommended components for the less budget conscious crowd. The total system price ended up somewhere around $1500 US. With the pace of change in computer hardware, however, it's time for an update! What is the state-of-the-art today? Essentially, there are two choices for power hungry gamers: the Pentium III 600 or the AMD Athlon 600. The PIII is easily attainable, the AMD Athlon will be attainable later in August, though benchmarks now appearing rate the Athlon an average of 10-15% more powerful. For the moment we will stick with the PIII, which is overclockable to 660 or 672 MHz (6x 110 or 6x 112MHz.)  Chart Copyright PC Week. Parts List
One of the recent changes in technology involves the new ATA 66 standard. Ultra DMA drives up til now have been limited to a burst rate of 33 MB/second. But with the new standard now appearing on mainboards as well as stand alone UDMA adapters, burst rate capability has doubled with the latest hard drives. Around February 1st ABIT Taiwan released revision 2.0 of their excellent mainboard. Improvements included features soft and hard, like a fifth PCI slot and a six chip data buffer set and SOFTMENU II. This is an excellent board for overclockers, and can be updated easily to ATA 66 using the Promise Ultra 66 board. More recently the release of the BE6, with onboard ATA66, is the way to go.  Keep Your Cool Any time you push a CPU beyond its rated speed, you need a big fan. 3DfxCOOL. 3DfxCOOL stocks a huge range of fans and will even custom build fans. I chose two fans as listed above. The T3_REX fan pushes 40 cfm over your CPU, while the dual fan P3HO is still a massive ball-bearing unit with thermal resistance of .46. With the smart fan features your BIOS will be able to monitor the fan's RPM and set off an alarm if it drops too low. |
With the correct software (Motherboard Monitor ), you will be able to monitor fan speed and CPU temperature in your operating system.
Now let's consider the rest of the components. I chose the Quantum Fireball KA Plus for the best performance possible under UDMA. This new breed of drive is around 40% faster than the older 5400 RPM hardware and supports the new ATA 66 burst standard, and arrives complete with the necessary cable. Since I would be clocking the CPU to 660 MHz it's important to supply data quickly to eliminate any bottlenecks.
 I chose the Kenwood Multibeam CD ROM as the best price/performance hardware short of going with a DVD/CD combination. This device screams along and is quiet to boot. The TB Montego II Quadzilla has a rock steady game port, four speaker support, and uses the Vortex II chipset for A3d in hardware. With complete D3d acceleration in hardware and digital output, this board is a no brainer for about $99. The Diamond MX300 can be had even cheaper, and the SB Live is also a good choice. With sound output of this quality, the Soundworks FPS2000 is a good choice. With this system you have complete digital output and four speaker surround for around $139 US. My video preference is TNT2 Ultra or the Millenium G400 MAX. If you intend to use dual displays, then the G400 or G400 MAX is a no-brainer. The Guillemot Maxi Gamer Xentor32 is the best price/performance board out there. If you are primarily flying Falcon4 and are looking for maximum frame rate then you should consider only the G400 max or the 3dfx V3500-TV. I chose both the Wingman Force as well as a CH or TM HOTAS. The ultimate in programmability is gained by the Thrustmaster gear, but some will prefer CH Products. If civil sims and/or bombers are your choice of platform, you'll need a flight yoke instead. The CH yoke or the SUNCOM are the way to go until someone builds a force feedback unit. For the best performance possible you need USB, so if you aren't in a hurry wait for the release of the USB throttles. SUNCOM, CH and Saitek will all release complete USB systems this fall. Join a discussion forum on this article by clicking HERE.
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