Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1593




As always, welcome back to another installment of our price guides. A lot has been going on behind the scenes, so let's take a few minutes to recap. First off, feel free to check out our QuickSearch RSS feed to get a real time, abbreviated update on all of the best prices in our search engine. We are also approaching the final days of the open beta for the RealTime Price Engine Beta. The beta engine is a bit easier to search and contains more succinct data than the existing engine, and it also gives everyone the ability to suggest links for the database here. They both feed off the same bots, so it is just a matter of how you want to view your data. As always, comments and suggestions are extremely appreciated.

Remember that on the AnandTech Price Engine, the graphs and charts from each page continually update, although the content does not.

Introduction

CPUs have not generated very many spectacular launches in the last few months. Our initial report on the Pentium M on Linux briefly looked at the most recent Intel processor launch, but we have a full-blown Windows review as well in the next couple of days for those of you who are really interested in the P6+ architecture. Some of you may be interested to know that the 3.8GHz Prescott "570J" CPUs are now available, and we will touch on that more later. The 90nm Socket 939 Athlon 64s are also starting to stabilize, which has resulted in a very favorable trend for the entire Socket 939 platform.

Usually, we do two separate topics per guide, but we have so much to say about CPUs this week that we are spending this whole guide just talking about them. We have a large amount of information this week and we want to cover it thoroughly, so take your time and get a feel for all of the little subtleties in each chart.

In merchant news, you may be interested to hear that two of our major merchants, AxionTech and Directron, have merged. Sure enough, if you check the footer at the bottom of the AxionTech webpage, you will see the Directron copyright - and Directron's own website hinted at a bit of the merger within an upcoming sale. Congratulations to the new company and good luck in 2005.





AMD Athlon 64

As we mentioned earlier, the 90nm Socket 939 Athlon 64 [RTPE: Athlon 64 939] became an overnight success for overclockers and mainstream buyers alike. The newest SKUs [RTPE: ADA3000DIK4B, ADA3200DIK4B, ADA3500DIK4B] boast AMD's Winchester core and should not be confused with the 130nm Newcastle processors. Merchants in our system that do not specifically denote the IK4B core are listed as older Newcastle cores [in our database] because some merchants tend to lump them both together. Unfortunately, the 90nm chips carry a slight premium as in the instance of the Winchester Athlon 64 3500+ versus the Newcastle Athlon 64 3500+. On the other hand, the 3000+ and 3200+ are priced extremely competitive with their Socket 754 counterparts. As we all know, the Socket 939 motherboards pack a little bit more punch than the Socket 754 boards feature-wise, but also support dual channel memory configurations with more DIMMs. With the cost difference between the two platforms so low, and given AMD's eventual stance to reduce Socket 754 to a budget platform, Socket 939 is the only way to go for AMD.

On a price versus performance curve, the Socket 939 Athlon 64 3200+ or 3000+ [RTPE: ADA3000DIK4B, ADA3200DIK4B] processors cannot be beaten. The Athlon 64 3800+ or 4000+ are unbeatable as far as performance goes, but does the additional 10% performance boost warrant two times the sticker price? Even the most extreme system builders would have a hard time justifying the additional $200 leap into the higher clocked Socket 939 processors, which could be better spent on a video card.

Of course, there are plenty of good reasons to still get a Socket 754 Athlon 64 as well. If you already have an old Athlon 64 motherboard or new Athlon 64 laptop, the Socket 754 platform is the only choice that you have. The Athlon 64 2800+ [RTPE: ADA2800AEP4AP] still reigns as our budget buy in Socket 754 land for a solid, all-around performer – even for gamers. However, those of you looking for something a little more exotic, like a fanless HTPC or SFF, might want to consider the low wattage Mobility and DTR processors. These processors will cost an extra $30 to $40, but since they run at lower clocks and temperatures, you can easily put them in a set top machine that requires relatively little cooling. The linear price points of the Athlon 64s all correspond well to performance; you won't find a poorly priced Athlon 64 (with the exception of the FX series), so buy the most expensive (best performing) Athlon 64 for which you can allocate funding.

More than a year since the first 754 chips showed up, the merchants are still taking significant cuts at the processor sell price. Just how low can Socket 754 go? The favorite mid-range chip of the year, the Athlon 64 2800+ took another decent cut over the last few days. Although, merchants seem a little reluctant to price the processor below the Sempron 3100+ where it officially belongs right now, according to our distributor pricing data. The price engine bot generated the below graph demonstrating the long term price trends on the Athlon 64 2800+. Keep in mind, even though this article will stay static once it goes live on the website, the graphs and charts will update continually!



Athlon 64 2800+





AMD Sempron/Athlon XP

For those of us who don't get the chance to choose our platforms or perhaps, against all sane advice, do not want an Athlon 64 system, the old Socket 462 can still provide some comparable performance. Unfortunately, that performance is just priced a tad disproportionately from the rest of AMD's offerings. The Athlon XP 2200+ [RTPE: AXDA2200DUT3C] and the Sempron 2500+ [RTPE: SDA2500DUT3D] are both aggressively priced value processors; though keep in mind, equivalently marked Semprons perform slightly slower than their Athlon XP counterparts.

If you really must grab one of those monster overclocking Athlon XP 2500+ chips, we insist that you get the mobile version instead, since it retails for about $10 less! These Athlon 2500+ Mobile processors actually overclock a little bit better than their desktop counterpart! Athlon XP processors continue to get marked up as supply drops out - but there still seems to be enough mobility processors to keep demand at bay. Just check out the current trends in both the 2500+ mobility and the 2500+ desktop.



Athlon XP 2500+



Athlon XP 2500+ Mobile

Our former value pick, the Sempron 3100+ [RTPE: SDA3100AIP3AX], has dipped in price a lot over the last six months, but not enough to warrant a purchase over the Athlon 64 2800+ for $8 more. Windows XP 64-bit Edition is already in release candidate, and the initial benchmarks show some pretty exciting performance increases out of the box. The unfortunate trade off of driver support is something that will have to be addressed in the future, but at least with an Athlon 64 2800+, you have the option to run 32-bit or 64-bit at a later date when support has been ironed out.

We recently received word from several distributors that the 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz Durons [RTPE: DHD1800DLV1C] are all but dried up. If you still want one for a pet project, you better act now before prices start to slowly climb back.




Intel Pentium 4, Pentium M

If we had to describe the Intel world in both processors and motherboards right now, "stasis" would be the first word that comes to our minds. Although, at CES 2005, we saw the unofficial launch of the next generation 915G Centrino family, the last major launches for Intel occurred back in October/November with the 1066FSB processor launch. Alas, the sole 1066FSB processor [RTPE: BX80532PH3460FS] still retails for over a grand and it received less than stellar reviews as well. The 3.8GHz Pentium 4 [RTPE: BX80547PG3800EJ] launch also received lukewarm feelings from Anand, and availability is also an issue. Even though the Pentium 4 570 processors have been on backorder/preorder for several weeks now, almost all products go straight to OEM (well, at least one particular OEM).

The 3.6GHz Pentium 4 560 [RTPE: BX80547PG3600E] took another significant price cut within the last week as well and that seems to have stabilized just this past week. The processor is certainly more attractive now at just over $400 than when we began tracking it at $700. Judging by the blue and green indicators on our price engine denoting "out of stock" items, it seems as though the non-J variants of the chip have dried up very fast. Only "J" versions with XD/NX protection are still available, but we lump them together with the vanilla versions in the price engine to avoid confusion.

As for our weekly recommendation, the 3.2GHz Pentium 4 540 [RTPE: BX80547PG3200E] has a very difficult price point to beat. Like most Intel processors, prices haven't changed all that much since the last cuts in August and $220 is just about right to spend on a processor.

The topic fresh on everyone's mind are Dothan "Pentium M" processors. Motherboards themselves are actually quite abundant - DFI [RTPE: 855GME-MGF] and AOpen [RTPE: i855GME-LFS] both sell first generation desktop motherboards based on the Socket 479 desktop Pentium M architecture, but unfortunately, prices have not stabilized and availability seems sporadic as well. As for processors, you can almost forget about Dothan availability. The older Banias Socket 478 notebook Pentium M's are plenty bountiful in the sea, but remember, Banias is a very different architecture than Dothan. To make matters worse, it seems as though some merchants are labeling the 2.1GHz 400FSB Dothan Socket 478 processor [RTPE: BXM80536GC2100F] as a Socket 479 desktop variant which adds a large amount of confusion to the mix. You should not be able to buy the solder-on BGA Pentium M's since they go to OEM distributors only, but some find their way into the retail channel one way or another. Make sure you are buying the retail chip if you go the Pentium M desktop/HTPC/SFF route!

Considering how expensive the motherboards are and how difficult new processors are to obtain, Pentium M on the desktop is a nice thought, but perhaps a little bit too ahead of its time right now. The old fashioned notebook Baniase are still available, and finding the right one is only a matter of budget. We recommend the cheap 1.7GHz variant.

Fortunately, the state of Dothan Pentium M won't stay so elusive for now. ASUS, Shuttle and several other top manufacturers are introducing Pentium M small form factors and HTPCs to the market, specifically designed for MCE applications within the next couple of months. With a strong barebones market, processor demand and availability will become much friendlier.





Intel Celeron, Xeon, AMD Opteron

The Xeon and Celeron portions of our CPU guides are always the hardest to analyze for us. We went several months without Socket 775 Celeron D processors, which wasn't the end of the world, but now, Celeron has started to retake some limelight now that significant numbers of 915G [RTPE: Intel 915G] and 915P [RTPE: Intel 915P] solutions exist. Celeron D certainly is no wonder chip, but it does give Sempron a run for its money – and both Sempron and Celeron are priced comparatively these days. The 2.66GHz Celeron D 330 [RTPE: BX80547RE2667C] clearly has the best price/performance ratio of all the Celeron D's and that remains to be our Celeron pick if you insist on choosing Intel over AMD this week. We still think that Sempron comes out on top in the price/performance race, but in most benchmarks, the results are extremely close. Since AMD motherboards are generally cheaper, the Sempron route is still the way to go if you want to save a few bucks.

Xeons are a particularly fun chip to watch because even though Intel will change the MSRP, the few large merchants usually play a tit-for-tat bidding war instead of a single massive drop like we get with the desktop chips. Similar to the Pentium 4 "J" series processors that, overnight, started to replace processors without XD stack protection, the Xeon "A" processors literally showed up one day and replaced almost all variants of the 3.4GHz [RTPE: BX80546KG3400E] and 3.6GHz [RTPE: BX80546KG3600E] vanilla processors. The "A" versions only add XD stack protection, since EM64T was present in all (both) Intel Xeon processors during the 3.2GHz days. Although Intel has the price floor set relatively low on the 3.4GHz and 3.6GHz models, the few merchants that carry the chips are taking advantage of the comparatively strong demand and high margin. Check out the 3.4GHz Xeon, which was marked down in September by Intel, but continued near its old price for months – even into today!

For sanity reasons, we just lump the "A" versions with the vanilla processors in our engine just as we do with the "J" versions of the Pentium 4 processors. There is no cost premium on the XD stack protected versions, which we feel is a great decision on Intel's behalf. Unfortunately, that still doesn't mean that you won't pay through the nose even though new Xeon and Opterons aren't far behind.



Xeon 3.4GHz

While the majority of our readers would never come across a situation in which they would ever need to buy a Xeon or an Opteron, here are the weekly deltas for both product lines.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now