Introduction
In this weeks price guide, we'll take a look at AMD's and Intel's pricing trends and like always, suggest a few processors to look into. First off, we would like to remind you to explore the RTPE before you drop your hard earned cash on what your heart desires.
We're seeing the socket 939 Opterons in stock at the moment, going for incredible prices! We'd suggest you get your hands on one of those ASAP while they are priced fairly low if you have been waiting around to get one.
If you are looking for an inexpensive yet decent system, the AMD Sempron's and Intel Celeron D's are great budget based processors to build your office system around, while the dual core processors are holding their price points fairly steadily.
We will start this week's CPU guide with the dual core processors.
Dual Core Desktops
The AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (Toledo core) [RTPE: ADA3800CDBOX] has seen a great price decrease of approximately $46, bringing its price down to a total of $335 shipped. While the Toledo core has seen a decrease in price, the X2 3800+ Manchester core [RTPE: ADA3800BVBOX] has been at the same price point for well over one month, currently at $322.
We are expecting AMD to release a new series of processors in the very near future, but at the moment, we will not be able to discuss any of this information any further. As the time period approaches, expect us to make some comment about this.
As you can see from the price chart below, Intel's Pentium D processors have also been at the same price point since our last price guide about one month ago. This chart right below show Intel's budget based Pentium D 820 [RTPE: BX80551PG2800FN] at roughly the same price since September.
Intel Pentium D (775) 820 800FSB
2x1MB
As with AMD, we are also expecting Intel to be releasing a new line of processors, but again, we cannot comment on this information at the moment. Please stay tuned....
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
10 Comments
View All Comments
Guuster - Sunday, December 25, 2005 - link
Its seems I have either confused myself , or anandtech is *incorrectly posting these new S939 opterons as a Venus core. ...shouldnt they be labeled as the San Diago core? I've thought that the Venus cores were for the 940 socket.Puddleglum - Wednesday, December 28, 2005 - link
San Diego = Athalon 64Venus = Opteron
Both are single-core, socket 939. Socket 940 uses dual-core opterons.
android1st - Sunday, December 25, 2005 - link
My friend would like me to configure him an Intel box, probably with Celeron processor, tho he didn't give me a price range yet. I'm wondering where I can find a good short guide to the price/performance/upgrade differences between Intel's sockets, as I personally use and follow AMD's architecture, at least a little better than Intel's...Thanks in advance for the help!
kmmatney - Saturday, December 24, 2005 - link
"Save your $5 and go with the 2500+ rather than the 2800+ as there is only a 200MHz clock speed difference..."When I bought my Sempron at NewEgg, the 2500+ and 2800+ were the same price, so I went for the 2800+, just to get a higher multipler. It overclocked to 2.4 GHz easily - great cpu.
Pirks - Saturday, December 24, 2005 - link
If you were choosing a new CPU for your gaming/C++ dev/DVD ripping home desktop, would you get Opteron 1xx or Athlon 64 for the same price? Please explain your choice. I'm curious about these server CPUs, wonder if they are just pluggable in any 939 mobo and if they provide any different experience from Athlon 64 for stuff like games, some 3D anim packages, C++/C# development and the likeProviaFan - Saturday, December 24, 2005 - link
The "experience" will be the same, but the socket 939 Opterons tend to overclock better because they are put through a more strenuous QA process (or so I'm told). The other advantage is that "Opteron" looks cooler than "Athlon 64" in your My Computer Properties. ;)ryko - Saturday, December 24, 2005 - link
you forgot to include the s754 3000+ venice e6 cpus that just magically appeared...http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...
artifex - Saturday, December 24, 2005 - link
Sure would be nice if we had links at the top to info like processor model drilldowns, so we could see where Toledo and Manchester fit in the scheme of things and if one is on a smaller process, etc. If one seems to perform 75% as well as its more expensive brother at the same speed, but is 1/2 the price, we should be able to tell that, also.snedzad - Saturday, December 24, 2005 - link
It doesn't make sense. I thought Athlon X2 CPU with Manchester core comes with 2x512 L2 cache.elecrzy - Saturday, December 24, 2005 - link
It does. The x2 3800+ with the Toledo core has half of its caches disabled.