Price Guides, August 2005: Labor Day CPUs
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Howard Johnston on September 4, 2005 4:27 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Athlon 64
While the dual core processors are stealing the limelight, AMD's current generation Venice and San Diego (revision "E") processors continue to drop in price since our last guide. The prices of these units have finally dropped below their older 130nm Hammer, Newcastle, and Winchester counterparts. One particularly interesting chip we would like to showcase is the "E6" Venice [RTPE: Venice E6]. These Venice chips have the same memory controller as the dual core Manchester and Toledo chips, and thus they support AMD's new memory divider. Since there is virtually no premium on the E6 Venice chips, the new memory controller might be worth reading up about.
Since our last guide, there have been some significant price drops. Check out how the Athlon 64 San Diego 3700+ [RTPE: ADA3700BNBOX] has performed over the last few weeks:
AMD Athlon 64 (939) 3700+ 1MB San Diego
The Athlon 64 San Diego 3700+ processor caught our eye this week at only $255. Although prices on the 3800+ continue to plateau, the 4000+ is beginning to drop to more reasonable prices.
We continue to recommend against anyone buying a Socket 754 computer, unless you plan on putting one of those fairly powerful Sempron chips inside. The Socket 939 easily outclasses the Socket 754 offerings, however if you're looking to build a decent budget PC or upgrade an older machine, 754 may be the way to go. Below is a listing of our Socket 754 Athlon prices; we strongly suggest going with a Socket 939 motherboard and CPU instead.
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ElFenix - Monday, September 5, 2005 - link
these PR numbers don't tell me anything =(andrewln - Tuesday, September 6, 2005 - link
mhz does not mean anything tooElFenix - Sunday, September 11, 2005 - link
mhz is very useful for comparing between the same families of processors.ideally they're be model/pr number, core mhz, bus mhz, and l2 cache size in these tables, i think.
joex444 - Tuesday, September 6, 2005 - link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Athlon_64..."> has a list of all the Athlon 64s, and below it has links to other types of CPUs where you can get a list like the one above from the link in See Also.For the "fun" of it, I decided to transform the list into a database. It's really interesting how many, for example, 3200+ CPUs there are, across sockets and cores. It's on my home PC, so I can't even find the best example for you, but I can see how you could be confused. I should do the same for Intel's, I think there's is more confusing. For example, a 520 and 518 differ in FSB speed -- the 520 has a 800MHz / 518 has 533MHz. It's a big difference but is only worth 2 points (assuming the 518 runs slower than the 520; if the 533MHz bus chip runs faster than a 520 but slower than 530 then it's a 522, if that exists, it's all theoretical since I'm not looking).
ceefka - Monday, September 5, 2005 - link
Would these boards require a 939 Opteron or do they also play with Venice, Toledo or Machester (X2)?ceefka - Monday, September 5, 2005 - link
It took me a while, but I have found the answer myself.From what I have seen from the Tyan Tomcat K8E S2865 it will play with 939 Opterons as well as any s939 CPU, though it doesn't feature the nF4 Pro.
Foxconn makes their NFPIK8AA-8EKRS for s940 CPUs NVIDIA nForce Pro 2200 + nForce Pro 2050 and nicy nice TI firewire controllers a+b. If they can swap the 2050 for a couple of PCI slots on a s939 version, that would be a nice board.
Tides - Sunday, September 4, 2005 - link
Is there really any gain from single cores atm? When will we see apps/games/programs take advantage of this.yacoub - Tuesday, September 6, 2005 - link
What you do is buy a socket-939 system now and a single core chip since they're pretty cheap these days. Then in maybe 6-12 months, pick up a dual-core chip when those prices have fallen a bunch so you're set for games that might finally arrivee that take advantage of the second core somehow.highlandsun - Sunday, September 4, 2005 - link
I just replaced the Winchester 3000+ in my system with an X2 3800+. My compile times have sped up drastically. On the 3000+ compiling my source tree took about 4 minutes. With the 3800+ and serial make, it's 3:22 and the system shows 50% idle time. With parallel make -j2 it takes 1:50 and the system shows about 15% idle time. With -j3 it takes 1:45 and about 1% idle time. I'm pleased.xsilver - Monday, September 5, 2005 - link
man those compile times are great but for noobs that are new to computers and only use it for surfing and games --- I think its still not really recommended that they get dual corea good analogy i can think of is turbocharging in cars -- too often i see people with twin turbocharger cars that dont even rev their engines beyond the 3000rpm limit for the turbo's to kick in. What a waste!!! and how stupid (eg. always driving around with turbo lag)