Price Guides July 2004: CPU and Motherboards

Introduction

Welcome back to this week's Price Guide. In this guide, we will cover what's happening in the CPU and motherboard worlds. As usual, be sure to visit our Realtime Pricing Engine to get the latest prices on everything that you see here and more.

With new sockets and chipsets rolling off the assembly lines faster than free donuts at Krispy Kreme, it's hard to keep up with everything. In this guide, we will focus primarily on existing hardware vs. some of the newer bleeding edge products, such as Socket 939, since the newer products would not yield much in the way of a cost/benefit ratio. That aside, currently available products and technologies are just getting better and better when it comes to being affordable and bringing what was once far too pricey for even enthusiasts, let alone average consumers, into reach. Price drops in the last month on Intel and AMD chips have helped to bring things back into alignment and make it possible to build a great system or upgrade an existing one with very little pain or headache.