Price Guides July 2004: CPU and Motherboards
by Anand Shimpi & Laura Johnston on July 23, 2004 9:32 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Back in Intel's camp, you may be seeing stars with the new processor naming conventions. Names such as "Intel Pentium 4 520" probably won't bring thoughts of a 2.8 GHz processor to mind, but that's exactly what it means. While some may question the use of this type of numbering system, it's here to stay, at least for now. So to help make things a little easier to digest, here's a quick rundown of processors we list that are already going by their new names.
| Pentium Models | ||||||
| Model Number | Clock | FSB | Cache | |||
| 520 | 2.8GHz | 800MHz | 1MB | |||
| 530 | 3.0GHz | 800MHz | 1MB | |||
| 540 | 3.2GHz | 800MHz | 1MB | |||
| 550 | 3.4GHz | 800MHz | 1MB | |||
| 560 | 3.6GHz | 800MHz | 1MB | |||
Keep in mind that the processors bearing the new numbering convention are the newer socket 775 instead of the 478 which has dominated the market so far.
Luckily for us, Intel did not jump around or go crazy when numbering these chips, so at least it's pretty easy to figure out which chip is which. The other good news is that most retailers do not show much, if any, price difference between, for example, a 3.0GHz Pentium 4 and a Model 530 Pentium 4.
Now for the important question; which processor is the best deal this week? With motherboards bearing socket 775 hardware starting at around the $140 mark, the best deals will be in socket 478 for now and for that we choose Intel's Pentium 4 2.8GHz 800MHz FSB chip.
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KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
We added some new hooks in the engine to prevent dealtime from hijacking the *real* link and also to prevent out of stock items from showing up. Hope that helps.Kristopher
KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
WarpNine: have some nocona tests coming up within a week.Trogdor, Yeah those cuts are nuts. Finding those Newcastles seems pretty difficult though - none of the big merchants are really carrying them.
Kristopher
TrogdorJW - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
Gotta love the AMD price cuts (FINALLY!!!) on the A64. The "Real Time Pricing" engine is doing its job nicely. Too bad we're still missing the 3200+ 2.2 GHz w/ 512K cache and the 3400+ 2.4 GHz with 512K cache. I think I would take the increased speed over the increased cache on A64 chips.With the new prices, all of the socket 754 chips are now much more affordable (except the 3700+, of course). The 3500+ is still too expensive, but with a price drop of $132, it is now at least a possibility, while at ~$500 it was simply way too expensive. Building my next PC just got a lot cheaper, needless to say. :)
WarpNine - Monday, July 26, 2004 - link
Where is the Nocona?? do you have any ETA when this chips will comes??PrinceGaz - Sunday, July 25, 2004 - link
Yeah, I'm holding out for 90nm S939 too. Its due out in the second half of this year according to the roadmap, but I don't know how many months we have to wait yet.It should be interesting to see how the 1066FSB Prescott's perform, especially as they have 2MB of L2 cache rather than 1MB. I wouldn't have thought the increase in cache would make much difference in performance (not enough to justify the increase in core size), but along with the faster bus speed it should help keep it competitive with the S939 A64's. Now all they have to do is turn on 64-bit capability.
ThePlagiarmaster - Sunday, July 25, 2004 - link
Pumpkinierre:Scarcity. Only 5 places are even advertising the 775 3.4E. Nothing to do with overclocking when nobody can get them to even try to overclock :) While some could go by reviews of chips, they're all marked Intel Confidential from what I've seen. No retail 3.4E 775 has been reviewed AFAIK (though some may have been sold no doubt). HardOCP might have done a review of a retail chip. They usually do...knowing the ES/Confidential ones might not represent retail experiences. I haven't been there in a few weeks.
Unfortunately (for AMD's stock price/profits) they are lowering prices, instead of just dropping in a lower model#. Morons. :) Guess I'll bite now...LOL. Then give it to my dad after the 939 .09's come out. That's the chip that will be the real OC friendly part. With no heat problems showing yet on .13, .09 should be great for them and SOI. With people hitting 2.6 (.13) we should get 3ghz from .09 OC'ed I'd hope.
KristopherKubicki - Saturday, July 24, 2004 - link
danidentity:http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=204...
danidentity - Saturday, July 24, 2004 - link
What is the Intel 925XE chipset? A different revision for the 1066MHz FSB CPUs? I haven't heard anything about that.KristopherKubicki - Saturday, July 24, 2004 - link
Pumpkinierre: I dont want to speculate too much, but if Intel keeps the stock purposely low on the better valued chips right now, the transition to 775 will occur easier.Kristopher
Pumpkinierre - Saturday, July 24, 2004 - link
Sounds like AMD are finally cracking. I notice S478 2.8 celeron-D and 3.4 P4Es have gone up massively in price. The last one 80 bucks more than the S775 3.4E! I wonder why- demand (or scarcity) for upgrade or good overclockers?