Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1190
Price Guides November 2003: CPU and Motherboards
by Kristopher Kubicki on November 2, 2003 9:41 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Its been a another exciting week for price guides as many of you may already know, Intel and AMD both made huge price cuts on CPU’s with the exception of the Athlon 64 line. We saw enormous cuts about a week before this happened right after our last guide for the CPU’s. Below is our plot of AMD prices:
This is what we like to see! Excellent cuts in the Opteron models with moderate cuts in the XP line have made the AMD line a very attractive choice again. Hopefully you took our advice a few weeks ago and held off processor purchases until November.
Another great thing to see is the inevitable replacement of the MP lineup with the recent cuts it’s pretty easy to see where AMD’s server line push exists. You may have noticed the 40% cut in the 242 and 244 lines. We would like to see the 246 drop a bit as an alternative to Athlon 64 FX-51, but that probably won’t happen for some time. (At least, probably not until December’s release of FX-53 and Athlon 64 3400+).
Unfortunately, neither CPU manufacturer cut prices on their biggest sellers. The Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton) has been on the incline for several weeks now. Not much, but a couple dollars. Around late September you could get the chip for about $78, but now it’s back up to ~$85. It does not look like the $20 cuts in the XP 2700+ and XP 2800+ will force demand for the 2500+ to decrease either, so it’s probable that we are locked into the Barton 2500+ price for a while.
Now that the XP chips have leveled off in price a bit we have some more weekly recommendations. The Barton cored 2500+ is still the best processor for the price, and we will keep hailing it as our pick. The Athlon 64 3200+ is also a great processor, but you will still pay about $400 even for the OEM version (without heatsink/fan). However, this chip could easily be in the $350 range by the holiday season. This is still not a bargain, especially considering we have no Windows for x86-64.
If AMD’s CPU’s didn’t excite you, perhaps the Intel price cuts will.
It is very exciting to see all the 800FSB prices cut, but at the same time we are disappointed to see a lack of movement on the 2.4GHz 800FSB, which was last week’ Intel pick. Keep in mind, AMD did not cut prices on their #1 selling chips either (Barton 2500+).
It was also interesting to see the uneventful launch of the (533FSB) Xeon 3.2GHz CPU. Unfortunately, it seems the 800FSB we were promised for Xeon 3.2GHz reserved for P4EE. Intel’s price cuts seem to have overlooked the whole Xeon line, and even the launch of the 3.2GHz did not have any effect on prices for the rest of the line. On a related bit of news, it looks like something interesting is going on with Intel’s substrate production. If Intel is in fact unifying its packaging, less tooling over at the production facilities will result in more price cuts on Intel’s behalf.
Also we can not forget the launch of the Extreme Edition P4 on November 4th. Unless Intel surprises everyone with the price, people are going to be standing in line for the Matrix Revolutions instead of waiting for the P4EE. Buying a 3.2GHz P4EE for $1000 versus buying a 3.2GHz Xeon for $885 seems almost trivial.
There were a couple cuts we are keeping a close eye on. The 2.6GHz 800FSB undoubtedly replaces our former Intel champion the 2.4GHz 800FSB. Even though we like the 2.4C a lot, it is pretty much a no brainer to go with the 2.6C when they cost the same! Likewise, the 2.8C is still on the move. Seeing the final price of that CPU set in around $200 also makes it a highly competitive choice.
We are a little overdue for Motherboards, so we have a lot to talk about starting with the AMD Motherboards; we have several new players now. Almost all of the Tier 1 and Tier 2 Motherboard manufacturers are back onboard with VIA for the Athlon 64 race.
As you can see, there is no shortage of VIA K8T800 Motherboards and quite a bit of KT600 options too. One of our more favorite boards is the no non-sense Gigabyte K8T800 GA-K8VT800M, which retails for $97.00. However, if you’re planning on jumping into the $400 Athlon 64 CPU you might want to consider something with a bit more options and punch, like ASUS’s K8V Deluxe. If you’re looking for a new Athlon XP board, check out the Albatron KX600 Pro which retails for under $70.
However, we would like to point out that we added a slew of new K8T800 boards this week; including offerings from MSI, Epox, Abit and Albatron.
Fortunate for AMD fans, earlier this week we heard AMD plans to support their current customers with faster Socket 940 and Socket 754 microprocessors and thus not make the existing K8T800 and nForce3 motherboards obsolete (Remember Slot A?). If AMD continues on its Socket 940 and Socket 754 path, we will see a bit more stability in the existing boards.
While NVIDIA is gaining strength with nForce3, it is evident that support of the K8T800 is growing stronger each day. The K8T800 boards are significantly cheaper and little better performing.
Manufacturers are starting to join NVIDIA’s ranks, however. Chaintech produces our most recent addition to the nForce3 line, and if you saw our recent review of the motherboard, it’s a spectacular piece of hardware. nForce2 still dominates the Athlon XP performance crowd. Favorites such as the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe have been up and down in price lately, so you will not find the board under $115. Albatron’s KM18G Pro 2.0 and the EPoX 8DRA+ both offer the best price/performance ratio right now.
With AMD’s choice to move the memory controller onto the processor, northbridge manufacturers are starting to look more and more the same. While this might look bad if you are NVIDIA or VIA, guys like ALi and SiS are smiling all the way to the bank.
SiS’s biggest partner, ECS, can mass produce OEM boards for Athlon 64 systems using their SiS 755 chipset at a significant lower cost. Some of these boards are showing up here and there, but you probably won’t see many in Fry’s anytime soon. Unless you’re a large ECS fan, you’ll probably never even seen SiS 755 in the USA.
Ali is another story entirely, even though they have been pretty dormant these last years they have done a lot of work into the M1683 chips. Again you will not see this chipset in volume outside of OEM sales, and even some retail sales at Albatron, ECS and a few other manufacturers have signed on with ALi.
There weren’t many surprises this week for Intel motherboards. However, we were slightly curious why all of the E7205 motherboards decided to drop in excess of 40 percent. Understandably, i865 and i875 are much better chipsets, but didn’t it seem like only 6 months ago Granite Bay boards were selling for over $200?
Our recommendation for the week has to go to Albatron’s PX865PE or Abit’s IS7/-E line. Both are great sub $100 boards. Combined with a 2.6C and 512MB of memory, you’ve got a pretty power rig for under $350.
In other Intel motherboard news, we saw an influx of PT800 motherboards from VIA, but it does not look like the PT800 will bring a ton of competition to i865PE; particularly when Albatron and Abit can both product i865PE boards for under $90.
Hopefully we were able to produce another helpful guide for everyone. As a closing note, don’t forget memory prices are still on the rise. Its going to be at least 2 weeks before we see them level out! See you later in the week with some detailed Video Card and Memory information.
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