Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1740
Price Guides - July 2005: More 64-bit CPUs
by Derek Wilson & Manveer Wasson on July 23, 2005 10:03 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
As always, we like to start off our price guides with a little plug for our Real Time Price Engine; quite possibly the fastest growing price engine on the internet. We quietly released a small little tool on RTPE that allows you to sort products by price or price-per-GB. Now you won't have to go through all that troubling math to calculate which memory is best for you anymore. Feel free to check out the forum thread here.
The last couple weeks have been madness for anyone attempting to buy a new AMD or Intel CPU. We have a new dual core chip that should debut in the review space on August first, 64-bit Sempron and Pentium 4s, and Socket 939 Opterons around the corner. Please check out our extensive AMD roadmap when you get a chance, there are a lot of new tidbits in the roadmaps that will eventually find their way into the retail channels like the new Socket M2 and S1.
Dual Core Desktop
It's been a long wait, but dual core desktop processors are finally here. The first Intel chips started showing up just after our last processor guide in June, and in the last six weeks prices have plummeted to meet demand. Intel's Pentium D lineup shipped first with AMD's very close behind. While AMD has another dual core processor ready for launch in the next couple weeks, Intel's dual 2.8GHz Pentium D [RTPE: BX80551PG2800FN] quite easily takes our recommendation for this week's dual core choice. At $245 this is an amazing processor; and with the relatively large cuts in DDR2 value memory lately, buying a dual core processor doesn't have to be a large investment. Granted, you will still need to buy a dual core motherboard, (either an Intel 945 or 955); so anticipate spending a little extra cash on the board instead. Let's take a look at the pricing trend on the Pentium D 820:
Other dual core Intel processors are on their way down as well; we are seeing pretty substantial drops since the dual core launch - a very pleasant and welcomed surprise.
No one would argue that AMD has the weaker dual core chip. The K8 architecture in general has no problem outperforming Prescott head to head, and AMD's integrated memory controller does an incredible job of moving the memory bottleneck off the motherboard. However while AMD has the better processor, it doesn't seem to be able to offer a really competitive price. Intel is currently pumping out dual core processors in all of their fabs; AMD's Fab 30 in Dresden is the only facility AMD has prepared for dual core production. Even at vastly inferior performance, Intel's Pentium D 820 costs half that of AMD's dual core solution.
Hopefully the embargoed X2 will alleviate some of AMD's criticism for not providing a low cost dual core processor. Remember, each speed grade in X2 processors today offers about a 3 to 4% difference in performance. We personally don't feel the 3% bump between the Manchester 4200+ and Toledo 4400+ warrant the extra $100, but then again the same people who buy those kind of processors usually don't hesitate to spend $600 on video cards either. Chances are, if you know what applications are going to perform better on Toledo versus Manchester, you've already got your dual core chip picked out.
Athlon 64
Aside from dual core processors, AMD's current generation Venice and San Diego processors have also moved significantly since their launch three months ago. OEM versions of the processors surfaced about three weeks ago and AMD's stock heatsink-fan (HSF) combo is actually quite good (particularly when compared to Intel's plastic monstrosity). Anand recently wrote about Athlon 64's "unofficial" DDR500 memory support on Venice, San Diego (and other revision "E" processors), so make sure you take a look at that when you have a chance. Don't get your hopes up too much - unfortunately the additional speeds did very little to performance for the Athlon 64.
That being said, you should still buy a revision "E" processor anyway. The different between 90nm AMD processors is less than a dollar in most situations, and why stick yourself with a 130nm or a revision "D" chip instead? For those of you playing at home, check out price fluctuations on the Athon 64 Venice 3500+ processor [RTPE: ADA3500DAA4BP]:
A few merchants had a very nice sale going on last week that put the Venice 3500+ around $250; money well spent in our opinion. Price on the 3800+ and 4000+ processors has been very stagnant since their launch; don't expect any great deals above 3500+ this week.
It's getting to be about time we stop recommending Socket 754; at least for non-budget uses. Virtually all Socket 754 processors cost more than their Socket 939 counterparts at this point, and again, why hamper yourself with the 130nm chips that lack SSE3 and only have a single channel memory controller? Socket 754: you will be casually missed.
However, if you just need a decent budget PC, Socket 754 is actually a very good alternative to Socket 462 (or a Celeron). Check out the next page for our opinion on AMD budget processors.
Sempron
Even though Socket 754 really only lasted about a year as a formidable AMD platform, its advantage as a competitive budget platform has just barely been tapped. Sempron 754 offers incredibly performance over the Socket 462 chips, but at a premium. The cost of Socket 754 motherboards aren't the inhibiting factors any longer; good nForce4 Socket 754 motherboards [RTPE: MS-7135-010] can be had for about $70 (compared to good nForce2 Socket 462 boards that run about $50). Coupled with a decent TurboCache or HyperMemory video card, you can build a pretty solid rig for under $400.
Sempron is also finally getting 64-bit support. Many of you may have seen our roadmap article earlier this week with specifics on DDR2 for future Semprons as well. A few Sempron 3300+ chips (specifically SDA3300AIO2BX) offer full 64-bit support; as well as the upcoming revision "E" Sempron 3400+ to launch on August 1st. However, if you're going to shell out the cash for a 2.0GHz or 2.2GHz Socket 754 processor, you really ought to be spending the few extra dollars on a Socket 939 Athlon 64 of the same speed grade; the additional L2 cache will go a long way in performance.
AMD's Turion launch received a lot of attention in January when AMD unveiled their plans to "recapture" the mobility market. Although Turion chips have been in laptops and notebooks for almost three months, channel variants of the chip are just starting to show up now. We have some interesting articles coming up detailing the differences between Turion and Athlon 64 Mobile; so stay tuned for those in the near future.
For those old fashioned folk, AMD still has some Athlon 64 Mobility chips floating around as well. The overlapping SKUs between Turion and A64-M are slightly confusing, so if you anticipate buying a mobility chip for overclocking, make sure you know exactly which processor you're getting before hand. Also keep in mind that AMD is not real good at keeping their motherboard providers up to date with mobility chip information; you may have a motherboard that doesn't necessarily have support for the Turion or Mobility chip in mind.
Intel Pentium 4
Everyone said it was dead, but the Pentium 4 580 (4.0GHz Prescott, BX80547PG4000E) seems to be rearing its ugly head in Europe. A bit of creative Googling should yield some German merchants with the processor in question. We have the chip on our radar in RTPE, but we don't anticipate or recommend that anyone get too excited over this monstrosity. Sometimes, just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
In other news, the Pentium 4 lineup is finally getting 64-bit support. Considering the sad state of 64-bit drivers and Windows x64, jumping onto the 64-bit wagon with the already poor Prescott architecture might not be such a good deal. If you're interested in an operating system with real 64-bit support, then maybe the new Prescotts are worth it. On the other hand, you're probably better spending your money on Athlon 64s instead.
The Prescott-2M chips moved ever slightly this week, although hardly enough over the last few months to warrant a purchase. We are still unconvinced of the Prescott's performance when compared to Athlon 64, so don't expect to see us recommending any of these processors in the near future (unless the price begins to drop dramatically). Surprisingly, even though Intel added another chip to the Prescott 2M lineup, other Prescott-2M chips did not move in price because the Prescott 670 [RTPE: BX80547PG3800F] debuted well above the MSRP of any of the other Prescott chips.
Intel Celeron D
Like Intel's desktop counterpart, Celeron D is also getting 64-bit extensions. A few of the 3x1 and 3x6 CPUs are already available for purchase, if that's really your thing.
Pentium M
We always get a little bit of flak if we decide to not mention the Pentium M lineup; even though performance is weaker than just about anything in the Athlon 64 lineup. It's a great laptop chip, but certainly not competitive enough on the desktop segment. Maybe when Yonah gets here we will have something to gawk at again. Our engine picked up a little movement on the Pentium Ms this week, but processor prices were actually higher on the average since our last CPU Price Guide was published.
Intel Xeon, AMD Opteron
Although Xeon doesn't seem to have anything interesting going on these days, AMD has a lot of neat tidbits in the works. For starters, Socket 939 Opterons are already shipping to some OEMs, so expect to see those in high end workstations in the near future. It's probably going to be several months before these chips show up in the retail channel, but do expect to see those soon. To us, it appears as though AMD is just trying to reduce overlapping FX/Opteron 1xx SKUs.
The Opteron 154, 254 and 854 launch is also coming soon and some OEMs have already started promising chips to their customers. The new chips will run at 2.8GHz and utilize 1MB of L2 cache. All chips will be Socket 940 with the exception of the 1xx Opterons which will show up on Socket 939 instead. For those interested in buying a Socket 939 Opteron, you may want to consider a similarly priced Athlon 64 or even an FX chip. The price on the 939 Opterons is very prohibitive right now and will continue to be that way for a few months.
Movement on the new Opteron chips was non-existent over the last several months; although the Opteron 252 Troy [RTPE: OSA252FAA5BL] took a huge drop in price recently - mostly in part to the availability of OEM unboxed processors.
Don't expect any big changes this week for Xeon processors. There were a few small dips in Iriwindale processors here and there, but for the most part there was nothing worth commenting on this week in Xeon-land.
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