It's been a while since we had a full blown guide installment, so this week is jam packed with a little of everything from the CPU, motherboard, memory and video card categories. If you haven't got a chance to take a look at our RealTime Price Engine, feel free to check it out. Last week we wrote a small introduction since we refer to the engine constantly in our guides.

The most notable addition to our Price Guides would be the addition of Opteron CPUs. Now that the chips are more readily available, we should see some decent competition with Intel's Xeon and Itanium solutions. To be fair on the server market, we have added a few Xeon processors to the Intel lineup on our engine.

Additionally, the 400MHz FSB announcement created a bit of a stir in the AMD community. Officially, the XP 3200+ is the only 400MHz AMD CPU available. We have not seen much convincing evidence to prove that there are going to be many other official 400MHZ FSB XP chips, so we may have to see if AMD even pursues this technology. Remember, the Athlon64 to be launched in September is supposed to completely replace the AMD XP line. Thus, the XP processors will assume the role of low end processing.

Intel did not spend the last few weeks sitting around either. The release of 800MHz HyperThreading CPUs debuted with a 3.0GHz version of the Pentium 4 (which we took a look at here). Although we have not specifically benchmarked this processor against the AMD XP 3200+, the general consensus is that the 3.0CGHz P4 easily takes the cake in performance, at a lower price. Perhaps more exciting than the 3.0C P4 are the 2.8, 2.6 and 2.4 GHz P4s on the horizon. We are very excited to see Intel adopt middle grade CPUs with HyperThreading as this looks to be a technology that is here to stay. Right now the HT chips are priced about 20-30% more than their 533MHz FSB counterparts, but we are expecting these chips to fall to ranges about $20 more than non-HT CPUs.

Typically, we recommend AMD CPUs due to their price/performance ratios. However, it looks like the sub 3.0GHz 800MHz FSB Pentium 4s will break into the midrange market with relative ease. Furthermore, it looks like overclocking on these processors is extremely easy; our forum users seem to have no problem obtaining 1000MHz (and higher) FSB. The CPUs and motherboards are still new, so it may be a couple weeks before prices stabilize.

The most exciting news in motherboards would be the introduction of 800MHz solutions from Intel and SIS. The Intel 875P chipset grabbed the majority of the spotlight over the last couple weeks, but that doesn’t mean they are the only solutions available. If you want a good example of what i875P is capable of, check out our MSI Neo2 review from last week. Keep in mind, however, that the i875P is just one of three solutions for 800MHz FSB.

Abit’s BH7 was one of the first 800MHz 845PE boards available; and we also took a look at that motherboard a few weeks ago Since we were very impressed with the 800MHz FSB Intel CPUs, the 845PE boards are good choices if you are on a budget crunch. Don’t forget that SIS also has a revision of 648 that is capable of 800MHz, although currently only Gigabyte has a motherboard available. The upcoming 648FX and 655FX chipset are something completely different that we will see more of in upcoming weeks.

While we liked i845PE, the chipset that has everyone buzzing is i865. This chipset is available now and has been for several weeks. However, AnandTech and most other review sites were under NDA which prohibited us from discussing any details about it. The i865PE will eventually phase out the i845PE, which has been a great chipset for the last several months. Our highest recommendation for motherboards this week would be the Albatron Px865PE Pro II, which we reviewed just recently.

So what about SIS 655 and Intel E7205 (Granite Bay) motherboards? Well, they are nice, but you probably do not want to buy one any time soon. E7205 really does not offer any performance advantages over i875 or i865, but is still priced in the $175 to $200 range anyway. SIS 655 boards came down considerable in price to hit the sub $150 market, but an 800MHz revision is necessary to keep competitive with Intel’s offerings.

NVIDIA and VIA have not been idle either. The somewhat moot release of 400MHz FSB sparked “new” chipsets in the form of KT600 and nForce2 Ultra 400. As most people know, nForce2 Ultra 400 is no different than the existing nForce2 available back in December (with the exception of a few optimizations).Forums users have been reporting 400MHz (and higher) overclocking on the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe for months. To call the nForce2 Ultra 400 a “new” chipset might be giving it a little more credit than it deserves.

KT600, on the other hand, seems a little more innovative, but certainly not extraordinary. The resemblance between KT400A and KT600 is very clear, but KT600 will actually be adopted by more than one motherboard manufacturer. As you can see from our price engine, KT400A is only represented by the DFI LanParty motherboard. KT600 should perform better than nForce2, but the question that has to be asked is how much more will consumers pay for a single memory channel solution that will be phased out in 5 months?

Even though we usually have the inside scoop on these things, we have to question the usefulness of 400MHz FSB motherboards. How many 400MHz CPUs does AMD plan on releasing in the next 5 months (before Athlon64 debuts)? Even if they do release more processors based on 400MHz FSB, does it really make sense to buy a whole new board and processor that AMD has announced they will discontinue in September? It seems like the decisions AMD is making will only hurt them in the long run. Development and marketing for all these revisions costs time and money. Kudos to NVIDIA for the foresight to integrate 400MHz in the original nForce2 design in order to avoid pumping out another motherboard chipset with a 6 month shelf life.

As long as we are talking about NVIDIA’s motherboard chipset again, let us touch base on what other things they are working on. The nForce3 chipset was just released for Opteron based systems, but motherboards have not really hit the mainstream market yet. NVIDIA also mentioned to us that they were working on a single memory channel revision of the nForce2 in order grab the low end AMD market from VIA and SIS. With nForce2 motherboard prices as low as they are, we recommend grabbing a lower priced nForce2 board for under $90 rather than a crippled product that will cost about the same anyway.

Well, even though there seems to be a lot of action in the other hardware categories, memory remains stagnant. Shockingly, this was one of the first weeks in a long time where DDR prices began to stabilize.DDR400 and DDR333 are still priced reasonably, at around $75 and $65 per 512MB respectively.Unfortunately, nothing much else is going on.We do suspect that we will see more DDR433 and DDR466 modules on the market with Springdale hitting in full force.Remember, this is an extremely overclockable chipset.

If you are in the market for memory, we think the extra $10 difference between DDR333 and DDR400 is money well spent. Some of our internal memory tests show that DDR400 increases overall system performance about 5% over DDR333. We have an upcoming articles concerning DDR400 performance on Intel 875P motherboards, so don't miss the upcoming official benchmarks.

Over the last year, video cards have been hard to follow.From time to time, we will go months without seeing any changes. Then, once in a while, we have a month like May 2003 where entire video card lines are phased out in a matter of weeks.

Perhaps the largest disappointment in the video industry was the GeForceFX 5800 (Ultra).As much as we praised the nForce2 for being an excellent forward design in motherboard chipsets, we have to equally criticize the 5800 for being a horrible video card from a design and implementation viewpoint.

It’s not so much that the FX 5800 was an altogether bad video card, but rather it was just a case of Murphy’s Law. Manufacturing problems combined with extremely late release schedules turned the GeForceFX 5800 line into a Voodoo5 repeat. The unusually loud fan put the final nail on the coffin.However, NVIDIA is not new to the video card market, and they recently took a few steps that have been quite commendable.For those of you not following the market, check out our GeForceFX 5900 preview we did a few weeks ago. NVIDIA did the right thing admitting the 5800 line did not live up to they hype and NVIDIA’s standards.To make a long story short, it looks like the entire line will be discontinued within the next few weeks.This will be slowly replaced by the 5900 series.

This is not to say the 5900 cards are perfect, either. Although the 5900 (NV35) chipset is not completely finalize, a slew of reviews have accused the video card giant of purposely inflating benchmarks by hard coding some acceleration into the chipset that inaccurately takes advantage of weaknesses in benchmark suites. While the evidence looks compelling, we cannot speculate this early on what is going on. We will most likely see a different “final” product and driver set that does not contain the same problems.

On the ATI side of the field, the Radeon 9800 cards also made a stellar preview.Some distributors are beginning to carry 9800 cards, so it month be long until they start showing up everywhere.As a lot of people have already pointed out, this card does not really warrant an upgrade from the already dynamite 9700 (Pro) and 9500 Pro Radeons. The older 9xxx Radeons already support DirectX 9, so Half Life 2 and Doom III are going to look spectacular anyway (and you will save yourself a few hundred bucks too).

Our favorite video card continues to be the 9500/9600 Pro. Neither can hold up against the 9700 Pro, but the price/performance ratio is definitely excellent.At time of publication, the Sapphire 9500 Pro cards were running about $180 while the 9700 Pro Radeons were ranged anywhere between $270 and $350. You might want to check out our previous article on the Doom III benchmarks to see how these cards stack up against each other.

A few other interesting things for video cards are also coming together.The GeForceFX 5200 cards are quickly replacing the GeForce4 MX line. In fact, we are having trouble even finding MX cards anymore.We think the 5200 line is a strong competitor to ATI’s 9000 card.The GeForce4 line is not yet dead, however. A personal favorite, the ChainTech Ti4600 is priced under $150 at this time of publications.This is not a DirectX 9 compliant card, but it does pack a neat little punch.

The card we are waiting for is the FX 5600. In the past, we have always found the highest price/performance ratio in the “middle of the pack” cards. This includes the Radeon 9500 Pro and the GeForce4 Ti4400/4200.There have not been very many benchmarks yet, but for a card that is priced $20 less than the Radeon 9500 Pro, it would be nice to see if NVIDIA can regain the middle market crown.

As always, don’t forget to check out our RealTime Price Engine for up to the minute pricing on memory, video cards, CPUs and motherboards!