Price Guides December 2003: Holiday CPU & Motherboard Guide
by Kristopher Kubicki on December 7, 2003 1:18 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
There were two significant bits of news on the Intel CPUs. The largest and most recent was the “unofficial” news on Prescott release information (however, take this news with a gain of salt as a more recent article has already disproven some of the information). Most reliable sources are expecting Prescott to ramp up clock speed quite quickly to compete with Athlon 64, but let’s not forget AMD isn’t sitting around waiting for this to happen. Athlon 64 FX-53 and Athlon 64 3400+ will most likely debut before the Prescott release date; whenever that ends up officially becoming.
The other more solid tidbit of information was the official retail store launch of the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. Intel launched this processor a few days before Athlon 64 in order to steal a bit of the fire from AMD’s eye (don’t be surprised if AMD pulls a similar trick before Prescott’s launch). Unfortunately, original expectations were a little optimistic as vendors are pricing the behemoth at over $1050. To put that in perspective, you could build a dual Opteron system with memory and a motherboard for less than the price of the P4EE. Pentium 4 3.2GHz non-extreme CPUs sell for under $400. Since there is such a large differential between the costs of the two chips, don’t expect the non-extreme version of the chip to decrease.
We got an unusual email from a vendor last time we recommended the 2.6GHz 800FSB P4 over the 2.4GHz counterpart. In a nutshell, the vendor was concerned that the 2.4GHz price was artificially inflated and in turn cut the price on the 2.4C. Funny enough, all of our other merchants cut the price soon after. Once again, the 2.4GHz 800FSB is the less expensive CPU. However, the 2.6GHz processor has not changed much in price, and it still can be had for under $175 (last month at this time the 2.4GHz 800FSB processor cost $176). Once again the 2.6GHz remains our choice of the week.
We hope our guide coverage this week provided some good insight for holiday shoppers. Since its decision time for computer shoppers everywhere, next week we will have even more info on video cards, hard drives, and optical storage. Stay tuned!
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KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, December 9, 2003 - link
Drewintheav;While over the last few weeks I have begun to agree with you. This board is designed by my particular favorite former-Abit employee (he also did the BP6), and really is a killer design. Anyone else object?
Kristopher
drewintheav - Tuesday, December 9, 2003 - link
I think the DFI Ultra Infinity should be recommended over the Asus A7N8X Deluxe. The Infinity is faster, overclocks higher, supports 4x SATA raid, Digital coaxial S/PDIF in and out, CMOS reloaded BIOS setup and costs less than the A7N8X!BlackShrike - Tuesday, December 9, 2003 - link
So uh why does INTEL price their only competing cpu to the athlon 51 FX at like twice the price?I mean I know they can bullshit their marketing to anyone they want without AMD making a single protest, but the serious gamers will never buy it. Not when the FX is better at less price.
KristopherKubicki - Monday, December 8, 2003 - link
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/chipsets/display/2003...It depends on the board really. Some manufacturers have a stockpile of unlcoked chips, others do not. Check the forums for which motherboards have it and which dont.
Kristopher
robschneider - Monday, December 8, 2003 - link
This is the first time I've heard that Intel is removing the PAT backdoor from their 865PE chips. Has this been verified? Is it too late to buy an 865PE motherboard and get that feature?Rob
LazyBoyTony - Sunday, December 7, 2003 - link
Those P4 EE are soooooooo expensive....i thought they were going for around double the non extreme version..... i guess the extreme editions come with extreme prices :PGlenn - Sunday, December 7, 2003 - link
no intel board prices either??KristopherKubicki - Sunday, December 7, 2003 - link
Sorry, typo mistake ;) Fixed.EglsFly - Sunday, December 7, 2003 - link
Ditto #1 - "Where are the AMD CPU prices?"LHolmstrom - Sunday, December 7, 2003 - link
Where are the AMD CPU prices?