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Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1780
Price Guides, August 2005: Labor Day CPUs
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Howard Johnston on September 4, 2005 4:27 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
As always, we like to start off our price guides with a little plug for our Real Time Price Engine; quite possibly the fastest growing price engine on the internet. A handy feature of the RTPE is the ability to compare several products using the OR function depicted by the pipe ("|") symbol. For example, if you wanted to compare the prices of an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ and the Intel Pentium 4 670 you would run the following search in the RTPE: "amd athlon 64 3800+ | intel pentium 4 670." We have more details in our forums.
You may also start to notice new graphs for RTPE and AnandTech. Unfortunately, GNUPlot wasn't cutting it anymore, so we switched to a .NET engine that also powers the rest of the graphs on AnandTech.
The processor scene has settled down a bit since our last price guide. Although we've started seeing the new Intel Celeron D lineup with EM64T enabled, we're still eagerly awaiting the Intel Pentium 4 662 and 672 with virtualization support. Check out our updated Intel Roadmap for the latest info on Intel's soon-to-be released processors. On the AMD side of things, we've seen the X2s sharply dropping in price since September making them a much better value since their introduction.
Dual Core Desktops
Prices on Intel's dual core desktop lineup haven't seen much action since our last processor guide in late July. Although the price of the Pentium D 820 (2.8GHz) [RTPE: BX80551PG2800FN] has shown a slight incline since our last guide, we still recommend it as this week's dual core choice. The sub-$250 price tag makes it a great value for multitaskers.
Intel Pentium D (775) 820 800FSB 2x1MB
The rest of the dual core Intel processors have also show very little change over the past few weeks. Hopefully with the release of the 9xx series next quarter we'll see these prices drop.
We know AMD's dual core processors outperform Intel's offerings clock for clock, but they have thus far been too expensive to compete with Intel in terms of pricing (a sharp contrast when you think about the AthlonXP days where AMD held the price advantage). Since August we've seen AMD's entire line of X2 dual core products continue to drop in price steadily. The X2 3800+ [RTPE: ADA3800BVBOX] has proven to be a worthy match both price and performance wise to Intel's lineup. This week we also saw the Toledo version of the X2 3800+ [RTPE: ADA3800CDBOX] showing up on a few vendors' sites. The Toledo X2 3800+ is an interesting animal in the fact that it is actually carries 2x1MB L2 cache, but with half of that cache disabled. If you're looking for an AMD dual core option we would definitely recommend one of these offerings. Be sure to check out Anand's article on AMD's unofficial DDR480 memory support on the X2 processors to see how to squeeze a bit more performance out of your X2.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 (939) 3800+ 2x512KB Manchester
We still feel the lowest cost X2 offers the best bang for your buck. From our X2 3800+ review you can see that each speed grade in X2 processors continues to offer only a 3 to 4% difference in performance. A 3% performance doesn't justify a $100 price hike in our book.
Athlon 64
While the dual core processors are stealing the limelight, AMD's current generation Venice and San Diego (revision "E") processors continue to drop in price since our last guide. The prices of these units have finally dropped below their older 130nm Hammer, Newcastle, and Winchester counterparts. One particularly interesting chip we would like to showcase is the "E6" Venice [RTPE: Venice E6]. These Venice chips have the same memory controller as the dual core Manchester and Toledo chips, and thus they support AMD's new memory divider. Since there is virtually no premium on the E6 Venice chips, the new memory controller might be worth reading up about.
Since our last guide, there have been some significant price drops. Check out how the Athlon 64 San Diego 3700+ [RTPE: ADA3700BNBOX] has performed over the last few weeks:
AMD Athlon 64 (939) 3700+ 1MB San Diego
The Athlon 64 San Diego 3700+ processor caught our eye this week at only $255. Although prices on the 3800+ continue to plateau, the 4000+ is beginning to drop to more reasonable prices.
We continue to recommend against anyone buying a Socket 754 computer, unless you plan on putting one of those fairly powerful Sempron chips inside. The Socket 939 easily outclasses the Socket 754 offerings, however if you're looking to build a decent budget PC or upgrade an older machine, 754 may be the way to go. Below is a listing of our Socket 754 Athlon prices; we strongly suggest going with a Socket 939 motherboard and CPU instead.
Sempron
AMD's budget Socket 754 processor continues to chug along offering excellent performance for a slight price premium. This week we saw the full lineup of 64-bit enabled Semprons show up at vendors, without much fluctuation in pricing yet. As always, if you're looking to spring for a "high end" 3300+ or 3400+ Sempron we strongly suggest taking a look at a Socket 939 offering instead. The bump in performance the larger L2 cache provides is well worth the few extra dollars, and Socket 939 socket has a little bit longer life expectancy on AMD's roadmaps.
The Turion has finally started showing up in several retail channels. AMD's latest mobile offering vows to battle Intel's Dothan mobile platform and does so formidably. Not much information is available on what desktop motherboards will run the Turions so keep a close eye on our CPU forum for the latest developments.
The Athlon 64 Mobility is still available at a few vendors for those looking for an overclocking thrill. Vendors tell us stock on these chips is very low, but whether or not that means we will see market changes in price and availability is still up in the air; Athlon 64 Mobility and DTR sales have been extremely low to begin with.
Intel Pentium 4
With IDF just wrapping up we have a lot to look forward to over the next year in Intel's lineup. That being said, since our last guide we haven't seen anything very exciting on Intel's current product line. The EM64T enabled CPUs are out in full force on the retail channel; however, jumping on the 64-bit bandwagon this early may not be such a good idea given the current driver support in Windows x64. Oh yeah, and dispite what anyone says, 64-bit doesn't make your games run faster.
The Prescott-2M chips are now a viable option relative to the 1MB parts, as their prices have dropped to parity with the lower cache models. The problem is that the 2MB cache actually runs with higher latencies, so in many instances performance is the same as the earlier parts. 6xx has always come with 64-bit support enabled, so now the choice is for less faster cache, or more slower cache. There are instances where the 5xx parts win, but for the same price most people will want the 6xx model. You can get full benchmarks in our 6xx performance review.
We're
still waiting to see the Prescott-2M with virtualization start shipping by the
end of the year. Hopefully when they arrive
they'll drive the rest of the 6 series Pentium lineup down in price. Until then, we can't recommend these
processors especially when compared to their Athlon 64 counterparts. (Remember, though, that Intel traditionally doesn't drop non-value chip prices below $175, choosing to discontinue production at that point.)
Intel Celeron D
Again not much new since our last processor guide in the Intel low-end arena. The EM64T enabled Celerons are beginning to arrive in larger quantities now although this feature alone isn't enough for us to recommend this product over an AMD 64. Sempron 64 chips are available and continue to outperform their Celeron D counterparts, with or without 64-bit extensions.
Pentium M
The Pentium M continues to be an expensive toy this week. This product makes for an excellent mobile platform but doesn't make too much sense in the desktop world. If you're looking to build a unique, low power rig then this is the processor to go for.
Intel Xeon, AMD Opteron
We still haven't seen the Opteron 154, 254, and 854 processors hitting the retail channels yet. Expect to start seeing those in the near future. It's our understanding that OEM's are already shipping these chips inside their high end systems, so it seems as though the retail lag is just a bit higher than usual.
Furthermore, Socket 939 Opterons started to ping up on our radar as well. Again, we have OEMs that are shipping Socket 939 single Opteron in workstations already, but the retail market continues to lag. Taiwanese motherboard OEMs are just starting to get their act together with nForce4 Professional, so even if you had a Socket 939 Opteron to play with, the motherboard support isn't quite there yet anyway.
This week we saw several large price drops in the higher end Opteron processors. The Opteron 870 Egypt [RTPE: OSA870FKA6BS] shows the largest price drop most likely due to increased supply of OEM parts.
There has been little fluctuation in the world of Xeon for a long time. However, we just picked up some pretty substantial price cuts on several Xeon parts. We're not sure if they're permanent cuts (as they're mostly from one store, Allstarshop.com) or if they're Labor Day sales. If you're in the market for Xeon, though, all of the Xeon Irwindale cores just took a big step towards price equality with that of the older Nocona parts.