It was about this time last year the Pentium 4 2.4GHz 533FSB chip became the Intel chip to own. Funny enough, the 2.4GHz 533FSB and 800FSB CPUs continued to dominate the sub $200 price range for the majority of 2003. Only recently did the 2.6GHz 800FSB chips fall into the ~$170 market.

It is very easy to imagine the 2.8C will fall into that sub $200 category very soon; our price analysis has shown the processor prices are still on the move since the October 24th Intel price cuts. It feels almost a lifetime ago that the 533FSB 2.8B was $450 processor (December 2002). However, the most obvious trend here is the lack of ramping for the Pentium 4 line. The Celeron line ramped quite a bit, but we all know that decision on behalf of Intel was quite pointless. In fact, the only real addition to the Pentium 4 line was HyperThreading, 800FSB and the 3.2GHz P4s.

HyperThreading was an excellent addition to the P4 line, although sometimes it can be more of a hindrance in certain situations. 800FSB was more of an evolutionary advancement rather than revolutionary however. If we want to talk about revolutionary, we only need to go around the corner to our friends in Sunnyvale.

With Prescott around the corner, it would be interesting to see what Intel has been doing for a little over a year.

AMD CPUs
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  • SUOrangeman - Monday, December 29, 2003 - link

    The new 74Gb Raptor should be much cheaper and widely available from more popular vendors now (i.e., NewEgg).

    -SUO
  • Phiro - Monday, December 29, 2003 - link

    You need to look a little lower, divide. I saw one for $194 I believe.
  • divide_by_zero - Sunday, December 28, 2003 - link

    Perhaps it is a function of live updating in prices but...

    "There are still some excellent NVIDIA cards. Our particular favorite, the GeForceFX 5900 NON-Ultra has been a spectacular sub-$200 card for several months now."

    And on the chart they range from $239.00 to $281.00
  • eBauer - Saturday, December 27, 2003 - link

    $217 is OEM, $240 is retail I believe.
  • Pumpkinierre - Friday, December 26, 2003 - link

    You had the A64 3000+ (512k L2) at $217 3 days ago and now you say its $240. I imagine demand would be great on this cpu but is there an error in your reporting?

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