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
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.
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Anonymous User - Thursday, September 18, 2003 - link
You could have gotten the motherboard Evan gave the Editors Choice to for $79, the EPoX 8RDA+http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1759&am...
DBaron - Thursday, September 18, 2003 - link
Whats wrong with the Nforce single channel boards? I was all set to buy a Soltek NV400, till I read this article. It seems like a good mobo for the price , and its fairly inexpensive too...76 at new egg. Is there something I am missing?Anonymous User - Thursday, September 18, 2003 - link
geez can anyone say WHEN the 9800XT NDA will lift or is that NDA too. >:(KristopherKubicki - Thursday, September 18, 2003 - link
#3: We will add some more 9800 NP cards. They didnt really dissappear, just resellers all decided to reorganize their SKUs are the same time.KT600 and nForce2 are priced about the same and perform about the same. Dual Channel memory is the largest difference between the two. If it doesnt cost you anything more, why not?
Kristopher
Anonymous User - Thursday, September 18, 2003 - link
R9800 (non pro) is becoming widely available and should not be replaced by R9800SE becauase that's a cut down garbage version that should not be allowed to bear the R9800 name...A question on the article. Why stress the fact that The KT600 boards are single channel, when dual channel does so very little for SocketA boards in general? When looking at practical performance it basically doe not do much good at all. I'm objecting because so many people looking for motherboards believe the myth that dual channel is an important feature. Don't keep it alive.
Anonymous User - Thursday, September 18, 2003 - link
I thought the 9800np were pretty much OEM cards like for Dell, etc? I didn't think the 9800np was nearly as common as the 9700np, 9500np, etc...I imagine the 9800SE will replace the non pro though.
Anonymous User - Thursday, September 18, 2003 - link
No comment about the disappearance of the ATI 9800 non-pro cards?