Price Guides November 2004: CPU and Motherboards
by Adam Rader on November 18, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Intel Processors - Socket 775
With the release of the P4 570J (3.8GHz), Intel shows that they are serious about the new socket 775 and the end of 478 in the near future. Of course, the 570J also shows that Intel's high-clock chips tend to be the very same space heaters that AMD chips were once known to be. This is likely to become even more of an issue as Intel gears up for their dual core processors.Regardless of heat output, which isn't an issue for the majority of buyers out there, both AMD's and Intel's top-end processors are running neck-and-neck for performance depending on what applications you utilize on them. Intel always has been, and still is, the leader for media encoding and content creation. So, unless gaming is your key target, Intel is definitely a good place to pick up a processor.
This week's best value comes to us in the form of a 2.8GHz Pentium 4, which carries the model number 520. The price on this processor is very reasonable, considering that it is sitting atop Intel's newest socket and chipset and will make for the most flexible upgrade path in the future.
If you want a bit of a boost in performance, for about $40 more, you can pick up the 3.2GHz version of this chip - the Pentium 4 540. Both chips will likely be more than enough to keep your machine going at full tilt for a long time without having to worry much about upgrading over and over again. Going with a chip any higher will decrease the cost to benefit ratio of the purchase by a good margin and in the end, will not be as much of a value on a dollar for dollar basis.
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Chadder007 - Friday, November 19, 2004 - link
"N'wood S478 3.4c $133 more than 3.4 Prescott. Unbelievable. You can see what people are buying. intel should continue with N'wood and S478. "I agree about Socket 478....Intel didn't care to give those users too much of an upgrade path and just jumped all over to the new socket way too soon with little justification to do so.
qballshalls2002 - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
Still waiting for the nForce4 boards to show before I go slurging again. Hehehe!aw - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
Haha...sorry...I meant if you were trying to get to 1:1 DDR600 like a lot of Anandtechers are inclined to do. My DDR is bigger than your DDR;-)
jmke - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
" The only thing that will hold it back is the quality of your RAM... "most A64 boards features excellent memory:htt(fsb) dividers, and the impact on performance versus running memory at 1:1 is minimal
aw - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
I agree with #8. My new 3000+ easily hits 2.4ghz which makes it $160 3800+. The only thing that will hold it back is the quality of your RAM...arswihart - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
why get Athlon64 3200+ 90nm instead of 3000+? Can't they both overclock the same, as shown in Anand's own tests?bofkentucky - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
In the 9xx board section, its is the intel 915 chipset, not 912.Pumpkinierre - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
N'wood S478 3.4c $133 more than 3.4 Prescott. Unbelievable. You can see what people are buying. intel should continue with N'wood and S478.PseudoKnight - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
The Athlon XP 2800+ is flipping me off. I'm scared.slurmsmackenzie - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
how come the 915 chipset isn't listed? it offers pci-e without the conversion to ddr2? anandtech always puts the emphasis on the fact that an upgrade to 775 is an entire system overhaul, when 915 offers the meager upgrade of processor/mobo, or cpu/mobo/video card without a performance drop from 925x. so why a 925x board is suggested for price/performance efficiency is beyond me.