Price Guides March 2005: Processors

Pentium M

For weeks, the Pentium M saga continues to unfold with new chapters almost weekly. This week, the talk of the town seems to be ASUS’s clever little Socket 479 to Socket 478 adaptor, which enables any mild budget 865PE and 875P motherboard to compete with the high end 885GME motherboard solutions from DFI [RTPE: DFI 855GME 855GME-MGF] and AOpen [RTPE: AOpen 855GME i855GMEm-LFS].

Again, our tests proved the Pentium M can completely run the gamut from being a killer overclocker to a complete dog in tests like Unigraphics on SPECviewperf. Surprisingly, however, there were definite performance improvements when using the Pentium M on ASUS’s CT-479; some of which can be attributed to the newer core logic and faster memory capability. As Anand puts it, “There's no reason to even consider an 855GME motherboard from AOpen or DFI; the ASUS solution is cheaper, better performing and is even a much more stable overclocker.” Enough said.



We are slowly starting to introduce 533FSB Pentium M’s into the processor lineup, but availability is still very poor. A few select merchants claim to carry the processors, but in reality, almost all are preorders for the chip. If you pay close attention, you’ll notice many of these chips claim delivery times of up to six weeks! Obviously, we don’t list merchants like that in the RTPE, but buyer beware!

Celeron

As usual, nothing interesting seems to have occurred to the Celeron lineup again. We always recommend Athlon XP or Sempron processors over Celeron chips, since the motherboards and processors are cheaper. This week turns out to be no exception either.



The Celeron D 335 [RTPE: BX80547RE2800C] just squeaks underneath the $100 magic price point. Although we clearly recommend AMD’s solutions over these low end desktop processors, the 2.8GHz Celeron D 335 isn’t half bad for a desktop chip considering the price.