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
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.
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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?