System Buyers' Guide: PCs for Under $1000

AMD Mainstream PC

To be completely honest, the AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition is not quite the equal of Intel's Core i3-530. In our tests, it came in slightly behind in practically every single benchmark, regardless of how many threads the applications used. But it comes very close, and if you buy into the value-packed AM3 platform using the X3 720 as your entry point, you'll have plenty of other features to go along with it.

Besides, when you judge it on its own merits, the $125 2.8GHz Phenom II X3 720 Heka Black Edition is still a very promising processor. Like the Athlon II X3 435 Rana we recommended for our entry-level box, the 720 Heka is at the sweet spot between dual- and quad-cores in AMD's lineup, performing better than Athlon II X4s in benchmarks that favor fewer threads and better than Phenom II X2s in benchmarks that favor more. It's a powerful overclocker, capable of a stable 3.8GHz on air and up to 3.3GHz on stock voltage, and the Black Edition suffix means you'll have an unlocked multiplier to help you get there. And of course, as with any AMD tri-core, you have a chance of unlocking its hidden fourth core with ACC. If you don't see yourself doing a lot of multitasking or multithreaded work, you could easily shave $34 by going with the $91 Phenom II X2 550 BE instead; if you plan on doing 3D rendering and video editing all day, you'd can save $23 by purchasing the $102 Athlon II X4 630 Propus. But if you're not certain where your CPU might take you and you want to maximize the possibilities, the 720 Heka is the right chip at the right price.

And to house that chip, we've got not one but two bang-for-the-buck motherboard possibilities from Gigabyte. If you're not planning to buy a discrete GPU to power video and gaming, we recommend the GA-MA790GPT-UD3H, a full-sized ATX motherboard built around the 790GX / SB750 chipset. At the excellent price of only $90 after rebate ($105 without) the MA790GPT-UD3H features an onboard Radeon HD 3300 IGP with 128MB of DDR3 sideport memory, which beats both AMD's newer 785G and the Intel Core i3-530's Intel HD Graphics in terms of raw power. It also comes with Realtek's premium ALC889A 7.1 channel HD audio chipset and loads of opportunities for expansion.

The SB750 Southbridge provides the standard four flavors of RAID (0/1/5/10) across six SATA 3GB/s ports, four facing front; connectivity includes VGA, DVI and HDMI video-out, six USB 2.0, one 1394a, a combo PS/2, Realtek 8111C GbE, six audio ports and a separate S/PDIF optical out on the rear panel; and the board supports all current Athlon II and Phenom II processors along with 16GB of DDR3-1666 memory in four banks. The board's layout leaves something to be desired, with one of three fan headers and its three USB 2.0 headers sandwiched haphazardly amongst the PCIe slots, but it does include a pair of PCIe x16 slots (with 8 lanes for each in CrossFire), three PCIe x1 and a pair of PCI slots, in addition to an IDE header, two 1394a headers and a legacy floppy connector.

However, if you do plan to buy a discrete GPU, we'd recommend the Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P instead. For the same $90 after rebate, it loses the onboard video of the 790GX series but gains the newer Realtek 8111DL NIC for Gigabit Ethernet, one 1394b port and one coaxial S/PDIF port on the rear panel. It has a more sensible layout and a reputation for moderate overclocking that should serve you well if you decide to push that tri-core CPU to its full potential.

As with our Mainstream Intel PC, onboard graphics make even a $100 discrete video card optional, but it's somewhat more of a talking point when that 790GX graphics still doesn't allow bitstreaming of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD or 8-channel LPCM audio output over HDMI. Though the Radeon 4850 is our go-to budget gaming choice at $100, if you're looking for this AMD PC to pull double duty as a home theater box, you might want to consider a Radeon 5000 series card like the $100 Radeon HD 5670 instead.