Introduction
For those of you not familiar with the guides here is a brief overview on
how we construct them:
We select vendors to appear
in our Price Guides based on two requirements: solid consumer feedback and
having the lowest possible pricing. You'll notice that these vendors aren't
paying us to be listed here; we do not accept requests to be listed here.
We have tried to eliminate vendors with low feedback rating, but we do encourage
you to do your own research before purchasing from any of these vendors.
With the new and improved
Price Guides we have not only increased our standards when evaluating online
vendors, but we have also partnered up with our friends at CNet to offer yet
another service to you all. Using CNet's Shopper.com
search engine we can provide you with an additional pool of vendors to search
from that are checked up on by CNet. You can wade through those results by
clicking on the CNet Pricing link in the second to last column on the right.
If there are any problems
with the guide or a vendor's pricing changes dramatically then be sure to
email the author listed at the top of the page and we'll take appropriate
action. Remember that although some vendors may be cheaper, we only list those
with generally positive feedback from a decent number of consumers. As usual,
if you have any questions, comments or suggestions feel free to email us or
post in the AnandTech
Forums.
Also be sure to check out
AnandTech's
Hot Deals Forum for even more great CPUs, Video Cards and other technology
buys.
Disclaimer
AnandTech does not endorse any vendor listed in the following price guide.
AnandTech does not sell positions on the Price Guide. AnandTech
nor any of the vendors listed in this guide guarantee the prices presented
in the following pages.
This Week
As usual, if you have any reports of incorrect prices please feel free to
email us with the name of the vendor and the product/price that appears incorrectly
on their website. This will help us produce a more useful guide in the future.
Our price engine that we have been developing is finally done. Expect to see the most accurate, more comprehensable, and most thorough guide on the internet.
Welcome back to another installment of our Price Guides! We have to apologize
for our leave of absence; we spent the last few weeks developing a new look
and final engine for our guides. The table layout may look much different than
designs we have adopted in the past but we chose this as our final design because
it fits flawlessly into the new site layout.
Pricings for this week are actually reflected on a week change, rather than
the change since the last price guide. Since our guides will be consistently
produced every Friday (starting next week), we will be able to see very clear
changes in prices. Also, we will have a 6 month analysis of certain product
pricings, in order to make better predictions of the prices in the future.
As for our AMD pricings this week, we are starting to see huge drops in the
333MHz FSB chips. A month ago, the XP 2700+ processor was priced about 60USD
more while the 2800+ processor was not even available. Last month we recommended
the XP 2100+ chip as our AMD chip of the week, and this week we decided to go
with the same choice. The high end 266MHz FSB chips are not moving much in price,
so the sub 90USD price tag on the 2100+ is going to stay attractive for some
weeks to come.
We were very excited to see the MP 2400+ last month, and we will be even more
excited to see 333MHz FSB MP's. However, since the MP line evolves much slower
than the XP line, it will just be a waiting game. AMD does not seem to have
any new chips slated for release until Athlon 64, so this may be the extent
of the AMD line for a while.
Since we just took a look at the AMD CPU's, let us follow up with the AMD motherboards.
Last month we predicted the KT333 and KT400 boards would come down in
a price drastically. Unfortunately, it seems the laws of supply and demand are not
agreeing with motherboard resellers right now. We have seen about a 10%
decrease in prices since last month on VIA chipsets, but the resellers won't
be able to hold out forever. There is no reason for the KT400 boards to not dip
under 100USD within a few weeks. When the KT400 revision comes out in the upcoming
weeks, the original KT400/333 motherboards will be dirt cheap.
The stars of the AMD motherboard scene appear to be the nForce2 boards. It
seems as though the NForce2
chipsets rose to the top in no time, easily suppressing the competing KT400/333 chipset.
In price and performance, our choice of the week is again the EPoX 8RDA+. VIA
is loosing the battle over their traditional stomping grounds of AMD chipsets,
and it only took the NVIDIA 2 rounds to knock them out. Will the March release
of KT400A upset the balance? Only time will tell, but we have a pretty strong
feeling that nForce2 is going to stay on top for a while.
This week we are a little light on motherboards, but next week expect us to
have double the amount we have listed here. Please feel free to email me, [email protected]
if you would like a particular motherboard to be added.
Now that AMD has had a run at this weeks pricings, its time for Intel. We have
mentioned a few times that Intel's roadmap only shows a few small increases
in processor speed for the entire year of 2003. For the most part, this should
keep pricings stable. Intel CPU's tend to follow a pattern of slow decline and
then a large drop in price at the arrival of the next CPU. Thus, expect the
extreme low end and the extreme high end Intel CPU's to slowly decrease in price,
while the 2.0GHz - 2.5GHz chips should remain about the same.
Noteable changes in price include a 100USD drop in price on the 3.06GHz P4,
as well as a 20USD drop in price on the 2.2GHz Celeron since last month. For
our low end pick, the 2.0GHz Celeron still holds the crown, simply because the
2.2GHz chip has not crossed the imaginary 100USD line yet. For the third guide in a
row, the high end pick goes to the 2.4BGHz P4. This CPU really gives the best
blend of power and price. Our benchmarks have shown more than once that the
extra 200USD for a 2.8GHz P4 really just is not worth it.
Since we took a look at the Intel CPU's, its time for the Intel motherboards!
As with the AMD motherboards, we apologize for the lack of selection this week.
Next week we plan on doubling our tracking inventory. Interestingly enough,
we again had trouble finding an abundance of Granite Bay boards. Since
there has been a lull in Intel CPU's and motherboards lately, most boards have
fallen into a clear pattern of price versus performance. Resellers have been
slashing prices on the less desirable boards, and keeping high end boards just
under their introductory prices.
We pretty much recommend any 845PE board, for now. We don't think Intel board
prices are going to change much in the future, so don't be afraid to shell out
a few extra bucks for a good P4 board.
We have gotten a good look at the ATI hardware over the last few months. Unfortunately,
pricings on the ATI hardware seem very sporadic. Recently, there has been a
lot of news about converting Radeon 9500 Pro's into Radeon 9700 Pro's. Needless
to say, since most of these claims are very recent, you may want to hold out
for a week or two before jumping all over the 9500's. If upgrading the 9500
to a 9700 is really as easy as some sources claim, you can bet this editor will
not hesitate to give it a shot. It will be a couple weeks before fact is
separated from fiction, so again we recommend waiting a week or two until all
the odds and ends pan out.
On an unrelated note, the 9700 Pro AIW appears to be poking its head here and
there. Do not expect this card to come down in price any, since it clearly is
the champion. NVIDIA can not compete with the AIW line yet, and ATI is taking
that fact all the way to the bank.
We are starting to really see a dry up of Ti4600s. Even the MSI Ti4600 from
last month seems to have vanished. Obviously, some GeForce4's are being relabeled
as Ti4x00-8x or Ti4800, but it looks like for the most part resellers are dumping
their NVIDIA inventory.
We should see the first GeForce FX cards around Feb. 3rd or 4th, so we can
expect any price protection on the GeForce4 line to dissolve. There have been
an awful lot of production problems getting the FX card to market, and obviously
no one anticipated this long of a wait. There is also rumor in the industry
of some 'creative' marketing approaches being taken by NVIDIA. Our sources say
that GeForce FX cards won't hit the full scale online market until after the
Chinese New Year. We will just have to wait a few weeks and find out!
For this week's guide we took a pretty good sampling of the more popular DDR
memory on the market. It is difficult to gauge which memory should go on the
guides, since there are literally hundreds of different brands, cache latencies,
and speeds on the market right now. Couple that with two different memory sizes
and it becomes very difficult to manage. Admittedly, this memory guide is very
messy, but we should be able to track more memory than ever before. If you have
a particular brand of memory you would like us to add, please email me: [email protected]
and I will add it!
For this weeks all around choice, we went with GeIL's PC3500 512MB module.
Even though the latency is slightly higher than the other modules at similar
speed, the price is really great. Plus, it also comes with a heat spreader,
which is an absolute must at 400MHz. The price of DDR in general is simply outstanding
right now. As you can see, we had several modules drop 10% in price since Sunday.
RAM prices in general seem to be endlessly spinning downward, and resellers
are only holding on to PC133 for legacy purposes. This editor is very glad he
makes a living writing product reviews instead of selling RAM.
Finally, we have this weeks selection of RDRAM. The dramatic price drops in
the DDR sector appear to also affect the RDRAM market as well. All of the listed
modules are down approximately 15% since last month, and they are still falling.
Next week we promise to have a much larger RDRAM selection since the last few
weeks have been very small.
Once again if you would like a product listed in our price guides next week,
please email me [email protected]. Special thanks goes to Parvish Shah, our new Networking Editor, for helping with this guide.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
