Price Guides November 2003: CPU and Motherboards

This is what we like to see!  Excellent cuts in the Opteron models with moderate cuts in the XP line have made the AMD line a very attractive choice again.  Hopefully you took our advice a few weeks ago and held off processor purchases until November.

Another great thing to see is the inevitable replacement of the MP lineup with the recent cuts it’s pretty easy to see where AMD’s server line push exists.  You may have noticed the 40% cut in the 242 and 244 lines.  We would like to see the 246 drop a bit as an alternative to Athlon 64 FX-51, but that probably won’t happen for some time.  (At least, probably not until December’s release of FX-53 and Athlon 64 3400+).

Unfortunately, neither CPU manufacturer cut prices on their biggest sellers.  The Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton) has been on the incline for several weeks now.  Not much, but a couple dollars.  Around late September you could get the chip for about $78, but now it’s back up to ~$85.  It does not look like the $20 cuts in the XP 2700+ and XP 2800+ will force demand for the 2500+ to decrease either, so it’s probable that we are locked into the Barton 2500+ price for a while.

Now that the XP chips have leveled off in price a bit we have some more weekly recommendations.  The Barton cored 2500+ is still the best processor for the price, and we will keep hailing it as our pick.  The Athlon 64 3200+ is also a great processor, but you will still pay about $400 even for the OEM version (without heatsink/fan).  However, this chip could easily be in the $350 range by the holiday season.  This is still not a bargain, especially considering we have no Windows for x86-64.