Best PC Hardware
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To experience modern PC games to the fullest, you need the best hardware. Every component plays a key role in how a game looks and performs. Having a single component weakness in your system can push your gaming experience from utter enjoyment to sheer frustration. In such a broad category, with so many excellent choices, choosing a winner was quite difficult. We usually advise our readers to keep their systems "balanced," making sure that all components are matched for optimal performance, but if we had to pick a single PC hardware product to have in our systems, it would be the winner of this award:
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AMD Athlon 64
When it comes to gaming, we can say without any reservation that AMD's Athlon 64 is the best processor you can get for your computer. It outperforms the Intel Pentium 4 in just about every game benchmark, and it comes at a lower price.
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Nvidia GeForce 6800 Series
Nvidia's remarkable recovery from last year's unfortunate GeForce FX experiment is nothing short of astounding. Video cards based on the GeForce 6800 series support Shader Model 3.0, and provide excellent graphics performance across all price categories.
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ATI Radeon X800 Series
ATI's Radeon X800 series matches the performance of Nvidia's GeForce 6800 series, as the two trade wins in a variety of game benchmarks. However, the Radeon X800 series is able to offer the same level of performance with lower power consumption.
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Nvidia nForce4
The Nvidia nForce4 earns a spot on our final list by offering SLI support for the AMD64 platform, but the extra features cement its position. The extras include Nvidia ActiveArmor, SATA II, a revamped nTune feature set, desktop-revolutionizing RAID morphing, and hard-disk failure detection.
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GameSpot Hardware - Best of 2004
Welcome to the GameSpot Hardware of the Year Awards, where we recognize all the great hardware products that have been released in 2004.
