Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1319



Welcome back for another installation of our Price Guides. These past few weeks have been a roller coaster ride for both the video and CPU market with price drops, unveiling of new technologies and the end of others. As always, do not forget to check out our RealTime Price Guides and our guides section for up to the minute pricing and system building information.

Intel Processors

In the CPU world it would not appear to be the rosiest of months for Intel. After what seems to be years of research and development for their next generation Pentium 4 dual core, codenamed Tejas, Intel has decided to pull the plug on the project. Sources cite the excessive heat output of this core as one of the key reasons for the cancellation and while current-generation cores output in excess of 100 watts, in some cases, this is not unexpected. Now that Intel is going back to the drawing board we can only wait in anticipation to see what they will come up with next. However, the cancellation of these processors does not mean the end of the line for the Pentium roadmap. On the contrary, the incredible successful Pentium M class (Banias) used in Centrino will expand and eventually migrate to the desktop for a low wattage, high IPC solution. There will be more information about Pentium M very soon as Dothan, the successor to Banias, debuted on Monday.

In the meantime our previous recommendation for the Pentium 4 2.8C still stands. After all, it has only been two weeks since we recommended it last; with a small price drop. This processor continues to provide the kind of price-to-performance ratio savvy consumers while providing HyperThreading and excellent content creation thoroughput.

We also received new news on Intel roadmaps yesterday. Be sure to check out our latest Intel roadmap. The new Intel chips debut late june, but we dont see our real first price cut until the third week of August. Expect fairly stable pricing until the June Socket 775 releases.



AMD Processors

AMD continues to cater to the overclocking crowd this week as their Athlon XP Mobile 2400+ (well as pretty much all of the Athlon XP-M line) shows what it can do. Overclockers report getting speeds in excess of 2.5GHz on air cooled setups. Remember, the XP-M are essentially handpicked low voltage Athlon XP chips (with unlocked multipliers). For those on the edge, there was a neat article a few days about about certain Athlon XP 2500+ chips with XP-M capabilities (that could be relatively easily unlocked). Even though Banias (and soon Dothan) dominate the mobile market, it looks like the recent XP-M and Athlon 64-M processors are regaining some lost ground.

As always, not everyone wishes to undertake overclocking or posses a motherboard and RAM capable of pushing the limits. For this reason, the Athlon XP 2800+ takes the cake for the sub-$100 buyer. Matching wits with our recommendation for the Intel side, the price is right and the performance is most definitely there.

AMD has also announced price cuts to their entire line of chips, most notably the Athlon XP and Mobile variations. The largest drops have been in the Opteron line thus far, but you can be assured to see some great price points before the introduction of Socket 939 in a month or so.



ATI Video Cards

Now for the part everyone is waiting for; ATI's graphics card lineup. Unless you have been living under a rock for the past week you should already be aware that ATI went live with new cards based on their R420 architecture, albeit a few weeks after NVIDIA "launched" their new cards.

ATI Radeon X800 Pro. That's the answer ATI came up with for the future of gaming, and it's not a bad answer at all. This card frequently DOUBLES the performance of existing 9800XT's without sacrificing the one-slot design, single power connection, and lower heat output that some dedicated gamers have grown accustomed to. To top it all off, the X800 Pro also edged out the GeForce 6800 Ultra in numerous benchmarks while only falling behind in a few categories and even then not by enough to push this model out of the running.

Overall, if you need to have the latest, the greatest, and you have a bank account to support it, this card would be the one. Even with NVIDIA's 6800U still waiting for it's chance to grace shelves at your favorite local and online PC retailers, the X800's slightly better performance in today's games, lower heat, power and size requirements place it at the lead when it comes down to the bottom line; The mighty dollar. On that note, it is advisable to wait a few more weeks to run out and purchase the X800 since the prices are still showing the very young age of this product. Since its first appearance among online retailers the card has already dropped by almost $50 and should level out near the $400 mark that ATI initially planned. Offline merchants like Best Buy are pricing the card more aggressively, but availability is somewhat of an issue.

The 9800 Pro still continues to be our favorite pick if you are looking for great performance that won't break the bank. Yes, it performs at less than half of what the X800 shows us, but it also costs half as much, and for that reason remains a solid choice for casual-to-moderate gaming. This is one of those rare circumstances where price and performance scale together.

Again, these prices should drop a bit more for the X800, and very possibly the 9800 series, so playing the waiting game for a couple weeks could save you some cash.



NVIDIA Video Cards

NVIDIA, as of yet, has not come to market with their new NV40-based cards and this is not expected until near June of this year. With that in mind, the GeForce 6800 Ultra is still a very solid card for gaming, and even supports some things the X800 does not, such as PS 3.0. This makes the card very much future-proof as long as game developers do indeed start coming out with PS 3.0 games such as the upcoming patch to Far Cry which is expected to implement this graphically stunning technology. Pixel Shader 3.0 has been widely talked about as an enormous advancement over PS 2.0, but there have been very few ways to actually confirm this. Look forward to many Image Quality (IQ) tests from AnandTech in the future.

In addition to the 6800 Ultra, NVIDIA has already decided to release a ramped-up version of this card, the 6850 Ultra. Basically, this card follows the trend of other 'Golden Sample' products released for previous models and continues with the higher clock speeds for both ram and the GPU. This is NOT to be confused with NV45, a completely different chipset NVIDIA has planned for later in this year which will be an even larger ramp from the NV40 (GeForce 6800).

Again, back on Earth, the 5900 (non-ultra) and the 5700 Ultra provide for the power you need if you need it right now and don't intend to fork over hundreds of dollars more for the likes of the 5900 Ultra and beyond. There are some specials right now on GeForce 5900s for well under $200; a fairly good buy for the price. The 5900XT cards also offer good performance for the price, but you need to overclock them to really unlock the full potential of those cards.

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