AMD cuts some processor prices by up to 48%

[Jan Panteltje]

Pricelist:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_609,00.html?redir=CPT301

Article in German with percentages:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/88002
Sempron 3600+ (2GHz) now 53 $

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Pricelist:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_609,00.html?redir=CPT301

Article in German with percentages:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/88002
Sempron 3600+ (2GHz) now 53 $

Unfortunately doesn't include their Socket 939 chips, a friend is
currently looking for an X2 upgrade for A64-3000+ S939.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Tony Hill]

Pricelist:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_609,00.html?redir=CPT301

Article in German with percentages:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/88002
Sempron 3600+ (2GHz) now 53 $

Dammit! Less than a month after I bought a new system with an AMD
chip in it! <sigh> I should be used ot this by now!

It's interesting that it's now cheaper for me to buy an Athlon64 X2
5600+ and a motherboard for less than a Core 2 Duo + motherboard. The
chips are almost the same price and for some reason the motherboards
for the Intel chips all seem to be at least $20 or $30 more.

 

[The Kat]

Unfortunately doesn't include their Socket 939 chips, a friend is
currently looking for an X2 upgrade for A64-3000+ S939.

HARD to find, and expensive. I have a S939 MB,
and have decided it's NOT worth the cost for an X2 CPU for it.

And if you think THAT'S bad, look at the price to upgrade a
Socket A XP CPU (I have a 2500 and a 2800).





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[The Kat]

It's interesting that it's now cheaper for me to buy an Athlon64 X2
5600+ and a motherboard for less than a Core 2 Duo + motherboard.

My problem with either is I'll also have to buy new memory.




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[Yousuf Khan]

It's interesting that it's now cheaper for me to buy an Athlon64 X2
5600+ and a motherboard for less than a Core 2 Duo + motherboard. The
chips are almost the same price and for some reason the motherboards
for the Intel chips all seem to be at least $20 or $30 more.

I noticed that long ago, too. There's a higher cost in making Intel
chipsets, due to their northbridge-based memory controller, I suppose.
At one time, I was finding that typical AMD systems were $100 cheaper
than typical Intel systems, when you kept the processor prices the same
between them. If they're only $20-30 more expensive now, then that's a
major cost reduction for Intel motherboards.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Yousuf Khan]

HARD to find, and expensive. I have a S939 MB,
and have decided it's NOT worth the cost for an X2 CPU for it.

And if you think THAT'S bad, look at the price to upgrade a
Socket A XP CPU (I have a 2500 and a 2800).

Well, I'm fortunate that way, I am still running a Socket A Athlon XP
system, and I expect that there will be absolutely no upgrade path for
me, other than a complete system overhaul. So I can start off right away
with an AM2 system, as necessary.

AMD has priced it's processors realistically against Intel's by now. The
processors are priced according to the closest performance Intel
processor that they compete against (even their Socket F FX's have come
down in price to reflect the reality). That typically means that they
have a one-for-one competitor at all levels except the highest
performance Intel processors. So that means that you'll have competitors
for C2D E6600 and below, but not above that. These are typically the
price points that most people will be buying anyways.

Yousuf Khan

 

[The Lone Gunman]

<snip>

: Well, I'm fortunate that way, I am still running a Socket A
: Athlon XP system, and I expect that there will be absolutely
: no upgrade path for me, other than a complete system overhaul.
: So I can start off right away with an AM2 system, as necessary.

That's "funny", I am too. Been running an Asus A7V333 with an Athlon XP for
5 years now. Just now starting to see a problem with one of the capacitors
(see my previous post re "solid capacitors") leaking, and am starting to do
the research on my next major overhaul. Was thinking at first at going with
Intel just for the Core-Duo (Conroe) thing, but I'm more and more leaning
towards AMD now. I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to CPU and chipset
vendors...just want the best bang for my buck. What I really want is decent
performance (read stability) and throughput. I do a lot of work on
Photoshop CS2 plus tons of video (re)encoding on my current machine. I see
dual-core as an absolute godsend in this arena as it will "free up" my
computer to do other tasks while encoding. Anyway, am now thinking about
the following AM2 mobo:

http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=1&model=1138&l1=3&l2=101&l3=296

Why? Simply because it's one of the few I've found so far (socket 775 or
AM2) that still sports TWO IDE channels (ie, to connect four devices) and
also is capable of using ECC memory. Don't know if this is the best
performance board I can get, but it does have the options I need. I would
definitely like feedback from someone on what they think of the Integrated
GeForce 6 GPU.

Later

/TLG

<snip>

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Why? Simply because it's one of the few I've found so far (socket 775 or
AM2) that still sports TWO IDE channels (ie, to connect four devices) and
also is capable of using ECC memory. Don't know if this is the best
performance board I can get, but it does have the options I need. I would
definitely like feedback from someone on what they think of the Integrated
GeForce 6 GPU.

It is rather important that I get at least two IDE channels myself. I
have absolutely no SATA drives yet.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Tony Hill]

<snip>

: Well, I'm fortunate that way, I am still running a Socket A
: Athlon XP system, and I expect that there will be absolutely
: no upgrade path for me, other than a complete system overhaul.
: So I can start off right away with an AM2 system, as necessary.

That's "funny", I am too. Been running an Asus A7V333 with an Athlon XP for
5 years now.

I was there too until last month, had an Socket A Sempron chip on a
Chaintech board (after the original MSI board I had died due to failed
capacitors).

computer to do other tasks while encoding. Anyway, am now thinking about
the following AM2 mobo:

http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=1&model=1138&l1=3&l2=101&l3=296

Just bought that exact board myself along with an Athlon64 X2 4400+

Why? Simply because it's one of the few I've found so far (socket 775 or
AM2) that still sports TWO IDE channels (ie, to connect four devices) and

That was one of the nice bonus features for me on this board.
Otherwise I would have needed an add-in IDE controller or a
SATA-to-PATA adapter.

also is capable of using ECC memory.

Pretty much all Athlon64/Opteron boards should, one of the nice things
about having the memory controller integrated.

Don't know if this is the best
performance board I can get, but it does have the options I need. I would
definitely like feedback from someone on what they think of the Integrated
GeForce 6 GPU.

Perfectly fine for Windows stuff, 2D work and whatnot. Good picture
quality on my 19" LCD using the built-in DVI connection. Performance
for gaming stinks though, worse than my old ATI Radeon 9200. I plan
on making use of the motherboard's PCI-Express 16x slot in the near
future.

 

[The Lone Gunman]

: On Thu, 12 Apr 2007 19:20:34 +0200, "The Lone Gunman"
:: <snip>
<snip>

: Perfectly fine for Windows stuff, 2D work and whatnot. Good
: picture quality on my 19" LCD using the built-in DVI
: connection. Performance for gaming stinks though, worse than
: my old ATI Radeon 9200. I plan on making use of the
: motherboard's PCI-Express 16x slot in the near future.

http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=1&model=1138&l1=3&l2=101&l3=296

Hey Tony, I was hoping you'd chime in here. So you bought the exact same
board? Are you happy with it? Any caveats? WRT to the on-board graphics,
I don't really do any gaming anymore (simply don't have the time <sigh>),
but I do a lot of editing in Adobe Photoshop CS2. Do you think the built-in
graphics would be suitable for what I do?

On another note, what's the absolute fastest memory one could install in
this mobo, keeping in mind that stability is of primary importance? Thanks
in advance.

/TLG

 

[Tony Hill]

: On Thu, 12 Apr 2007 19:20:34 +0200, "The Lone Gunman"
:: <snip>
<snip>

: Perfectly fine for Windows stuff, 2D work and whatnot. Good
: picture quality on my 19" LCD using the built-in DVI
: connection. Performance for gaming stinks though, worse than
: my old ATI Radeon 9200. I plan on making use of the
: motherboard's PCI-Express 16x slot in the near future.

http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=1&model=1138&l1=3&l2=101&l3=296

Hey Tony, I was hoping you'd chime in here. So you bought the exact same
board? Are you happy with it? Any caveats?

Based on the 1 month that I've had it, I've been very happy with the
board. I haven't encountered any serious issues yet, though I can't
claim to have tested anywhere near everything yet. The BIOS seems
decent, it has all the standard features. Probably a bit light on the
overclocking features for some people's liking, but I don't much
bother with that. On-board sound works well too with decent sound
quality, though I currently have an add-in card so that I can use my
surround sound, headphones and a mic without swapping connectors
around.

WRT to the on-board graphics,
I don't really do any gaming anymore (simply don't have the time <sigh>),
but I do a lot of editing in Adobe Photoshop CS2. Do you think the built-in
graphics would be suitable for what I do?

I would think so. Your performance might go down by a bit since
you'll be hitting main memory for graphics at the same time as using a
nutoriously memory intensive application. However I doubt it will
cause any problems and the performance hit will probably be in the
range of a few percent. Only other thing to keep in mind is that some
of your main memory will be unusuable for Photoshop stuff.

On another note, what's the absolute fastest memory one could install in
this mobo, keeping in mind that stability is of primary importance? Thanks
in advance.

I've got some DDR2-800 memory in there. This is the only DDR2 memory
I own, so I haven't tried swapping around any other speeds. I've also
left everything at standard auto-detected timings for now at least.
Seems to be working great.