Price Guides December 2003: Holiday CPU & Motherboard Guide
by Kristopher Kubicki on December 7, 2003 1:18 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
VIA was not shy on recent announcements either these last couple weeks. The chipset producer somewhat unexpectedly announced a dual channel core logic based on its PT880 chipset earlier this week; which was followed up by a quick commitment from Soltek, among others. On unrelated VIA news, analysts report that VIA’s November sales figures were off over 16% from October.
Looking at our AMD motherboards this week, it looks like VIA has the most aggressive motherboards for Athlon 64 3200+ (socket 754). Right now, we feel the MSI K8T800 motherboard is the best of the batch as far as price/performance goes. The Chaintech nForce3 150 beats the MSI K8T800 in performance, but the MSI board costs $60 less (35%). Perhaps now that MSI closed down 1/3 of its US offices, they are able to keep more competitive pricing.
Athlon XP motherboards are all over the spectrum. Contrary to popular opinion, prices tend to gently ramp up during the holiday season (followed by that January free-for-all that represents the real deals). We are seeing small and medium changes in the motherboard pricing, but don’t hold your breath for any cuts before January. Occasionally, we’ve seen some good deals but they are generally one or two day items. Fortunately, KT600 boards have been falling in price for so long that their stability now will result in no more significant, immediate price increases.
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KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, December 9, 2003 - link
Drewintheav;While over the last few weeks I have begun to agree with you. This board is designed by my particular favorite former-Abit employee (he also did the BP6), and really is a killer design. Anyone else object?
Kristopher
drewintheav - Tuesday, December 9, 2003 - link
I think the DFI Ultra Infinity should be recommended over the Asus A7N8X Deluxe. The Infinity is faster, overclocks higher, supports 4x SATA raid, Digital coaxial S/PDIF in and out, CMOS reloaded BIOS setup and costs less than the A7N8X!BlackShrike - Tuesday, December 9, 2003 - link
So uh why does INTEL price their only competing cpu to the athlon 51 FX at like twice the price?I mean I know they can bullshit their marketing to anyone they want without AMD making a single protest, but the serious gamers will never buy it. Not when the FX is better at less price.
KristopherKubicki - Monday, December 8, 2003 - link
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/chipsets/display/2003...It depends on the board really. Some manufacturers have a stockpile of unlcoked chips, others do not. Check the forums for which motherboards have it and which dont.
Kristopher
robschneider - Monday, December 8, 2003 - link
This is the first time I've heard that Intel is removing the PAT backdoor from their 865PE chips. Has this been verified? Is it too late to buy an 865PE motherboard and get that feature?Rob
LazyBoyTony - Sunday, December 7, 2003 - link
Those P4 EE are soooooooo expensive....i thought they were going for around double the non extreme version..... i guess the extreme editions come with extreme prices :PGlenn - Sunday, December 7, 2003 - link
no intel board prices either??KristopherKubicki - Sunday, December 7, 2003 - link
Sorry, typo mistake ;) Fixed.EglsFly - Sunday, December 7, 2003 - link
Ditto #1 - "Where are the AMD CPU prices?"LHolmstrom - Sunday, December 7, 2003 - link
Where are the AMD CPU prices?