Every time this is done we end up in amazement, as the term “budget gaming system” is something we often find a little scary. However, when you sit down, take your time, and look at all the options, it appears that there are almost always ways of getting high-end like performance for a fraction of the price.

Late last year we spent $900 US on the entire system, which got us the Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 processor, Radeon HD 4850 graphics card, 4GB DDR2 memory, 640GB hard drive, 22” LCD, along with a decent case and power supply. Although the E7200 was not the world’s most powerful processor, clocked at just 2.53GHz, boosting this frequency by another 1000MHz proved to be relatively easy.

This time we are taking a similar approach, though we will be using a better more up to date processor that surprisingly costs even less. The new AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition is the candidate, and with a default clock speed of 3.10GHz it has plenty of guts. Although this processor was just released earlier in the week, availability already seems quite good, though with pricing already at just $110 US, this could all change very quickly.

Complementing the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition processor is our favorite budget graphics card, the Radeon HD 4770, which costs a staggering $100 US making it the cheapest graphics card we have ever featured in a budget gaming article. Although in the past there have been many graphics cards that were cheaper than $100 US, none of them came close to deserving the title “gaming graphics card”.

So we have an amazingly cheap processor and graphics card combo that should deliver enough grunt to play many of the latest games in all their glory. The question now is what else will we throw into this system to make it work? The focus point of this article is going to be the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition / Radeon HD 4770 combination, but we are still going to build a full system designed for gaming purposes.

However, because both the processor and graphics card are very efficient generating such a small amount of heat, it has been decided that we would also build the smallest gaming system possible. If there is one thing I hate about high-end gaming systems it’s the size and weight that makes having to move it a job itself.

Therefore, we feel that if this budget system not only provides gamers with an affordable/good value alternative but also a portable gaming solution, it essentially kills two birds with the one stone. Having spent quite a bit of time lately gaming at different locations, I am quickly getting over lugging my heavy system around, and would happily sacrifice some performance for better portability.

However the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition was able to operate at 3.90GHz on our test bed without a problem. More over, this overclock was achieved by simply increasing the core voltage along with the clock multiplier. This dual-core processor comes clocked at 3.10GHz and boasts all the features of the more expensive Phenom II X4 processors, with the exception of two less cores.

The price tag of $110 US is what makes the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition such an exceptional product, and one that we simply could not have featured in our Ultimate Budget Gaming System.

ASUS M3A78-EM: Those looking to get the most value out of their Phenom II processor will stick with the AM2+ platform for now, for the simple fact that DDR3 memory is still fetching a slight price premium when compared to DDR2 memory. Also keeping in mind that we want to build a compact gaming system, the microATX format seems to make the most sense here.

Furthermore, we also had to consider the price of the board to avoid blowing the budget. The board that stood out the most to us was the ASUS M3A78-EM, which costs just $79 US and features the AMD 780G chipset. This motherboard also sports some pretty impressive features such as HDMI, DVI, Gigabit LAN, 12 USB 2.0 ports, and RAID0/1/10 to name a few.

The ASUS M3A78-EM is also a decent overclocker, which is almost a little surprising given the price tag. However we were able to reach 3.80GHz with a small voltage increase using both FSB and clock-multiplier overclocking methods. Bumping up the frequency of the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition certainly helped improve the performance of this budget gaming system.

OCZ Blade Series 4GB (2 x 2GB): These days it is almost a criminal offence to build any kind of system without 4GB’s of memory. Given that premium kits such as the OCZ Blade Series are selling for just $47 US, why wouldn’t gamers just go for a 4GB kit? Clocked at 800MHz, these modules use rather aggressive timings of CAS 4-4-4-15 at 2.1v, which we found quite impressive.

ASUS EAH4770/HTDI/512MD5: This really is what helps make this system so special. Interestingly, while our last few budget gaming system articles have all featured Intel processors, they also made use of Radeon based graphics cards. This is our first article that will use both an AMD processor and graphics card.

The Radeon HD 4770 is loved by all for its ability to deliver performance that is comparable to the Radeon HD 4850 and GeForce 9800 GTX+ at a heavily discounted rate. That said, since its arrival Radeon HD 4850 and GeForce 9800 GTX+ pricing has been slashed, but the Radeon HD 4770 has another important advantage.

That advantage being that it uses considerably less power and therefore also generates much less heat. This makes the Radeon HD 4770 rather quiet, even when under full load, and it also means those tech savvy users among us can overclock the snot out of them!

Intel Test System Specs - Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Edition (LGA1366) - x3 2GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 (CAS 9-9-9-24) - ASUS P6T Deluxe (Intel X58) - OCZ GameXStream (700 watt) - Seagate 500GB 7200-RPM (Serial ATA300) - Radeon HD 4770 (512MB) - Radeon HD 4670 (512MB) - Radeon HD 4830 (512MB) - Radeon HD 4850 (512MB) - GeForce 9600 GT (1GB) - GeForce 9800 GT (512MB) - GeForce 9800GTX+ (512MB) Software - Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 (64-bit) - Nvidia Forceware 185.85 - ATI Catalyst 9.5

AMD Test System Specs - AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition (AM3) - x2 2GB DDR2-800 OCZ Blade Series (CAS 4-4-4-8) - ASUS M3A78-EM (AMD 780G) - OCZ ModXStream Pro (500 watt) - Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB (Serial ATA300) - ASUS EAH4770/HTDI/512MD5 (1GB) Software - Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 (64-bit) - ATI Catalyst 9.5

Please note that there are two different configurations that we used for testing our budget gaming system. The first which is titled “Ultimate Budget Gaming System” on all the graphics, shows the results that we received without any tweaks. The second is titled “Ultimate Budget Gaming System Overclocked” and as you have likely guessed this is an overclocked configuration.

This configuration saw the processors clock frequency climb from 3.10GHz to 3.80GHz, while we overclocked the Radeon HD 4770 graphics card as well. The GPU was clocked up to 830MHz, while the memory was clocked to 900MHz, allowing for a few more frames per second.

Interestingly, 3Dmark Vantage indicates that the ASUS Radeon HD 4770 featured in our “Ultimate Budget Gaming System” is in fact faster than the ATI reference card. Overclocking both the graphics card and processor helped us to score a few more points, while it is worth noting that the overclocked configuration scored better than a Radeon HD 4850 paired with the Core i7 965 Extreme Edition processor.

The Phenom II X2 550 processor was a little disappointing in Call of Duty World at War, particularly when compared to the Core i7 965 Extreme Edition processor. That said, it costs a 10th of the price, so we are not going to make much of a deal out of this. Still, the system really only struggled at 1920x1200, while the 1440x900 and 1680x1050 performance was not all that bad.

Overclocking our Ultimate Budget Gaming System had a tremendous impact on performance, and now at all three resolutions the results were better than the Radeon HD 4850/Core i7 965 Extreme Edition combo.

Given that Crysis Warhead is strictly GPU limited, the Phenom II X2 550 did not place the ASUS Radeon HD 4770 graphics card at any kind of disadvantage. In fact, the ASUS Radeon HD 4770 was faster than the ATI reference card, albeit by a very small margin. Furthermore, overclocking the Ultimate Budget Gaming System squeezed a little more performance out of the Radeon HD 4770.

The ASUS Radeon HD 4770 featured in our Ultimate Budget Gaming System again proves that it is faster than the reference card, matching the performance of the Radeon HD 4850 in Unreal Tournament 3. Overclocking our Ultimate Budget Gaming System allowed for a few more frames per second to be rendered, but nothing substantial.

When testing with Far Cry 2 the ASUS Radeon HD 4770 featured in our Ultimate Budget Gaming System delivered the same performance as the ATI reference card. Again overclocking the system only had a small impact on performance in this game, but it did mean that the overclocked configuration was the fastest.

Finally we have included Supreme Commander, as this is a game that requires a great deal of CPU power and that is something the Core i7 965 Extreme Edition processor has, particularly when compared to the pokey little Phenom II X2 550. Here we see that even through overclocking, the Ultimate Budget Gaming System cannot match the Core i7 965 Extreme Edition test system when paired with the same graphics card.

Although the Core i7 architecture is extremely efficient it still requires quite a bit of power, where as the Phenom II X2 is capable of delivering a similar gaming experience while using a fraction of the power. Amazingly at idle our Ultimate Budget Gaming System uses just 104 watts of power, where as a similarly configured Core i7 965 Extreme Edition system uses 146 watts. The load results are also impressive as the Ultimate Budget Gaming System peaked at just 182 watts.

Of course a keyboard/mouse and monitor will also be required, but some may already have these components. This means if you were to buy a 320GB SATA hard drive for example, and a budget ATX case with power supply, the entire system could cost well under $500 US and deliver the kind of performance that we demonstrated here today.

In total we spent $650 US, excluding keyboard/mouse and monitor. This got us the components mentioned above along with a Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB hard drive, OCZ ModXStream Pro 500w power supply, and the little Silverstone SG04 case. At this price we got one hell of an impressive gaming system that’s low on power, quiet, and ultra portable.

Given that most games are GPU limited, particularly when talking about mid-range performance cards, the processor should not impact the gaming experience too much. While older much slower processors can cause problems, something as powerful as a dual-core Phenom II processor running at 3.10GHz is going to present few problems.

For this reason the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition processor is an incredible buy at $110 US, and it really is the ultimate budget processor for gamers. Furthermore, when paired with the Radeon HD 4770 it makes for an award winning combination. The ASUS M3A78-EM also impressed us with its outstanding feature set and unexpected overclocking performance.

Overall those looking to build a well balanced affordable gaming system should certainly consider the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition/Radeon HD 4770 combination, as at $200 US it’s an unbeatable combo. Furthermore, for gamers on the go, this hardware combination allows users to build very compact, highly mobile gaming systems.

Reviewed By Steven Walton