Weekly CPU & Video Card Price Guide: January 2001 2nd Edition

It has been another slow week for AMD. Prices in the Thunderbird category have shown very little change this week. Even with Intel's recent move to cut prices, the 1.0GHz Thunderbird is still an excellent processor in terms of price and performance. Another hot deal is the 850MHz part which is very close to the $100 mark. Those looking for AMD's Athlon-C (266MHz FSB) line of Thunderbirds are out of luck once again as they are still nowhere to be found this week. Also, the rumored 1.3GHz Thunderbirds will not be coming out any time soon. And when it does hit, you won't be kicking yourself for making a purchase now since it is highly unlikely that it will be using the cooler-running Palomino core.

If you are still using an older Slot-A based system and are looking to upgrade, the "classic" Slot-A Athlons are still your best bet. This week the price of the 950MHz part rose to about $200, making it less of an attractive buy than before. However, for many readers, buying a new Slot-A processor is still cheaper than buying a new motherboard and CPU. Most Slot-A boards can be made to use the higher speed Athlons with a simple BIOS upgrade.

On the low-end side of AMD's line of processors, we see that prices have not fluctuated much. The new Duron 850MHz can now be found for under the $100 mark; however compared to other Durons, it is over priced. The rest of the Durons, are priced very competitively compared to their Celeron equivalents. For those who don't mind overclocking to reach higher clock speeds, the Duron 650MHz can now be found at around $40 and is a very promising part.

Related Reviews

Make sure you check out our latest Athlon and Duron reviews for more information.