Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1156
Price Guides September 2003 IDF Edition: CPU, Motherboards and Video Cards
by Anand Shimpi & Laura Johnston on September 18, 2003 2:56 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
This week you may notice we are listing week changes in our guide. These week changes are reflections of the lowest price this week versus the lowest price last week. Our week deltas should keep product prices in better perspective for everyone. Even though the data in each table is generated in real time, don’t forget to check out our in house RealTime Price Guide which will tell you deltas for each product and merchant in our database!
It has certainly been an interesting week for CPU, motherboards, and video cards. In fact, it’s been at least 12 months since we had so many exciting things to report at once! The obvious question on everyone’s mind is what impact Athlon 64 FX is going to have on existing processor prices. From past processor releases, we would expect Athlon XP prices to drop. However, let us consider Opteron and Athlon MP. Opteron is easily replacing the Athlon MPs but even after 3 months we have not seen much price dip in the ill fated line.
As the Athlon 64 release draws near (September 23), resellers are not simply putting their chips on fire sale. Although it seems logical that resellers would want to eliminate their old inventory of XP processors, the lack of price cuts makes us wonder if resellers seem almost unconvinced that Athlon 64 will be the success that it needs to be. In fact, two of our most listed merchants, NewEgg and ZipZoomFly (formerly Googlegear), increased prices on all XP chips.
On an interesting side note, all Opteron prices dropped $10 - $15 bucks this week (again). Granted, even the moderate performing 240 Opteron are still expensive at $260. As we have said before though, the Opteron series has been very effective at replacing the Athlon MP. While this week the Opteron 240 and Athlon MP 2800+ are priced about the same, it’s easy to imagine the Opteron 240 priced less than the 2800+ and the 2600+ by Q4.
With all the upcoming fun going on with AMD, Intel has not been sitting around. As the title implies, IDF (Intel Developer Forum) kicked off yesterday with some pretty big news. Not only did Intel announce their new Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor, but new announcements such as Prescott die sizes have spurred a renewed interest in the consumer. As you may have read, Pentium 4 Extreme Edition is the same 3.2GHz 800FSB P4 from before, but with an additional 2MB of L3 cache. For most of us, this additional boost in cache size really wont matter. However, if you use your machine as a render station, or perhaps excessive amounts of MATLAB, the 2MB cache will boost performance significantly.
P4EE will probably take about 30 days before showing up on our price guides, so we doubt its announcement will start affecting prices yet. One thing we have noticed is the upward trend in prices for all 533FSB processors. There was a similar correction back when 533FSB replaced 400FSB, so this was expected. 800FSB processors continue to drop a buck or two per week, and will eventually price the same as 533FSB solutions. When P4EE finally does hit store shelves, insiders speculate it will cost about $740 in quantities of 1000. Considering this would price the processor $150 over the already expensive P4 3.2GHz, it is going to be a hard purchase to justify. Inevitably, prices of the 3.2GHz and 3.0GHz P4 will be affected.
Don’t forget to check our RealTime Price Guides. We recently added VIA’s EPIA line to our processing lineup! Stay tuned for our Computex as there will undoubtedly be more announcements on the EPIA and C3 line.
What better way to enjoy a new P4EE than with a new motherboard. The already volatile motherboard market displaced our price estimates for E7205, i845PE and i850E. Even though the i865PE chipset smokes just about anything out of the water, its hard to not take a second look at the already low priced Abit BH7, which was under $70 at time of publishing.
While certainly cost effective, there are better solutions this week than the BH7. Our recommendation, the Albatron PX865PE Pro was priced under $95, while other high performing boards like the Abit IS7 were priced around $100. Don’t forget to check out Evan’s roundup of the 865PE series back in June.
As much as the 875P motherboards have come down in price, they still do not justify a buy over the 865PE. As Evan’s roundup pointed out, you get the same, if not better performance at an excellent cost. This is really unfortunate for competitor SiS. While the budget conscious 648FX chipset debuted with an almost interesting splash, one really has to question what SiS is doing for their market. The SiS 648FX chipset is not bad, but would the owner of an already expensive 800FSB P4 buy a single channel motherboard to save (at most) $15?
Let us also consider Intel’s new chipset, the 848P. As Evan’s review of the ASUS P4P800S-E review showed, the 848P chipset is just an 864PE with one memory channel disabled. While we do not know the price points on the motherboard yet, in the upcoming weeks we would not be surprised if there are some boards priced better than SiS 648FX solutions. Unless SiS decides to bring something new to the table, and fast, they are sitting ducks.
AMD motherboards are where all the new things are happening. Athlon 64 doesn’t go on sale until September 23, but that hasn’t stopped any resellers from putting the motherboards on their shelves. At time of publishing, NVIDIA had 3 nForce3 motherboards available, the ASUS SK8N, the Gigabyte GA-K8NNXP and the Gigabyte GA0K8N Pro. MSI, Abit, Albatron and several other manufacturers have nForce3 solutions available, but resellers have been a little more careful about not putting those motherboards on sale.
Certainly, nForce3 is not a cheap debut chipset. Even though we saw samples of nForce3 back in late April, the GA-K8NNXP and the SK8N both retail over $200. Jumping on the Athlon 64 train right now does not make sense, at least from an NVIDIA point of view. Waiting at least a few weeks is the best course of action.
In other news, NVIDIA motherboards for the XP chipset plummeted like a rock last week. The motherboard market has less price protection and more volatility than the CPU sector, so a new chipset expectation creates havoc on the whole marketplace. Remember when 865PE replaced 845PE?
There are a plethora of good deals available in the nForce2 arena. One of our personal favorites, the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe is still priced a little high, but other notables such as the EPoX 8RDA+ and the Albatron KM18G Pro 2.0 both produce excellent performance at excellent prices. Other interesting buys include the dual channel MSI K7N2 Delta-L which is priced LESS than the ASUS A7N8X-X single channel board. Don’t buy a single channel nForce2 400 board. Trust us.
While NVIDIA might still dominate Athlon XP CPUs, clearly is not the case for K8. This week, we saw the debut of 8 VIA K8T800 motherboards. Even though it’s too early to tell whether K8T800 or nForce3 will become the new victor of the AMD market, we have a strong suspicion the competition won’t be as lopsided as nForce2 vs. KT400/400A/600. Even though we don’t know the specs on all of those K8T800 motherboards, its pretty clear to see VIA at least has a price advantage on nForce3. A little competition never hurt anyone.
The KT600 line is looking more attractive than it did a few weeks ago, albeit a far cry from replacing nForce2. The ASUS A7V600 is pretty much the best bet for the whole chipset, but again it’s a single memory channel option. Our advice, buy a KT600 board for the features, not the performance.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much to say here. The deck is stacked against NVIDIA, on more than one front. The fact that some NVIDIA hardware is down 20% from last week is also foreboding. For example, MSI GeForceFX 5900’s were priced $50 more last week, around $400. Our engine currently lists the card around $350. eVGA’s GeForceFX 5900; $250. Valve’s Half Life 2 is making NVIDIA cards look bad. Although Aquamark and HL2 are not the final word on how the GeForceFX line will perform in DX9 territory, they do represent an enormous error on NVIDIA’s behalf.
Even though ATI fans enjoy the good news (for now), is this really better for the consumer? If ATI can write its own check in the video market, pricing will eventually fall victim to markets of scale. If 9600/9800 Pro cards have no direct competitor, there is no justification to lower prices.
While we are on the topic of competitors, who is XGI? A somewhat unexpected announcement in May declared the merger of SiS’s Xabre division and Trident’s design team. Thus, XGI was born. This week, XGI held their first press conference to announce the release of half a dozen video cards including a dual core 16-pipeline behemoth. Although the specs are impressive, so were the specs of the Trident XP4 of last year (which was an unfortunate flop). As far as we can tell, XGI seems fairly confident they will produce some exciting results. Time will tell as the AnandTech team will surely get up close and personal at Computex next week!
Well, there is more than one reason to celebrate if you are an ATI fan. 9600 Pro and 9800 Pro cards are both hitting new low price points ($152 and $300 respectively). Obvious news from Half Life 2 creator Valve shot demand for the whole Radeon line overnight. On the whole, we have seen prices drop from last week, but do not expect it to last. As we mentioned on the previous page, it probably isn’t good for the consumer in the long run that we are back to 1 dominate player in the video card world.
Even though NewEgg’s deal seems almost too good to be true, don’t count out our usual weekly pick, the Sapphire 9600 Pro. We really like the 9500 Pro cards, but unfortunately supplies are really dried up. The occasional brick and mortar store might still have a 9500 Pro here and there, but it’s finally time to let the poor card go. Radeon 9500 Pro you will be missed!
Other ATI related news; the 9800SE and 9800XT lines are starting to hit store shelves at certain vendors. Unfortunately, a lot of information is still under NDA, but you can assure yourselves we will have more to come!
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