If Athlon64 CPUs are released on September 22nd...

...when will AthlonXP 2500/2800/3000/3200 CPUs be reduced in price?

I ask because I am planning on building a new PC just before I leave home for university and I am leaving on September 20th so I was wondering if prices will drop the same week the Athlon64 is released so I can wait a little longer and save some money (which would allow me to be able to afford food while I am living in my new house lol).

I know no one knows for sure but what has happened with prices in the past with new CPUs being released?

The 2500+ isn't going to get much cheaper than $90, and that's the one you should probably buy.

Good question.

Well first of all, the current best cheapest overclocker 1700+ T-bred B

How can you tell which one's which? Codes:
http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=222237
http://www.overclockers.com/tips00173/

Cheapest guaranteed T-Bred B? $49 free shipping
http://www.gameve.com/store/gameve_viewitem.asp?idproduct=267

Cheapest guaranteed DLT3C T-Bred B is $63 + $5
http://www.excaliberpc.com/product_info.php?cPath=178_186&products_id=1925

But I wouldn't spend $68, I would go with 2100+ instead for a dollar less $67 + $0
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?DEPA=&submit=Go&description=AXDA2100DUT3C

And finally the $88 Barton 2500+

Some of the above quoted prices may have changed in the last couple of days so they may go up by another couple of $ because of back to school crowd.

People usually don't buy above 2500+ for overclocking... so I think it's worth it to buy it now and use it for a month and a half.

It cannot go down by more than $10-$15 if that, and it's worth to use it for a month and a half for $10 or so. IMHO.


You'd be wise to ask q here about other parts of your system prior to purchase as buying the wrong heatsink will make a world of difference.

Well I do not intend on buying an Athlon64 until Q3 of 2004 at the earliest. I want to wait for them to mature a bit and see what happens first, not to mention they are going to be mad expensive. I think I may not have explained myself properly. Even though I am going back to university I am not getting a new PC for university "work" (what is work anyways? lol). I want it for gaming and overclocking, which is why I only mentioned the Bartons. At the moment I have decided on a 2800+ even though I know a 2500+ can easily be overclocked to the same speed, I just wanted that higher speed from the start and then overclock from there since the price jump is not that much. Really I just wanted to be sure that if I bought a 2800+ on September 15th, the following week it was not going to be significantly cheaper.

I just realised you edited your post

c627627 said:

You'd be wise to ask q here about other parts of your system prior to purchase as buying the wrong heatsink will make a world of difference.

Click to expand...

What do you mean?

This is what I plan on buying:

Asus A7N8X Deluxe (Rev. 2.00)
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton OEM
Thermalright SLK-800-U
Thermaltake Smart Case Fan 2
OCZ 1Gb PC3200 EL-DDR DUAL Platinum (2x512Mb)
Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro Atlantis 128MB
Enermax 460W ATX PSU (FMA)
Two DiamondMax Plus9 80GB 8Mb Cache Serial ATA HDD

Excellent heatsink. Excellent fan. Excellent CPU though overpriced. What do you mean "since the price jump is not that much" It's twice as much.

With a little luck 2500+ can do what 2800+ can but yes with twice the cost for the 2800+ you may need less luck.

Suggestions:

Abit is touted by most people here as being better than Asus.

+

Memory: Best is twinmos/ch-5 winbond pc3200
http://www.memoryx.net/gn256pc3200.html
It will allow you to go to 220 FSB which is more important than MHz.

+ wait for that compusa deal:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20030807164524.html

+

No Enermax. Antec or Fortron.

+

ooh serial hard drives?

"SATA Overclocking: It Can Be Done"
Ed Stroligo - 6/15/03


Most of you reported that you couldn't run SATA drives when you overclocked the PCI bus to any degree. A few even gave fairly convincing reasons why it couldn't be done.

But not all of you.

A few reported that they could run SATA drives with an overclocked PCI bus.

And now, so can I.

I shifted over from the Abit IC7 to the Asus P4P800, and found that there was no problem at all with the SATA RAID array running at an AGP/PCI speed of 72/36.

One person who managed the feat with an IC7-G suggested that what needs to be done is to increase the IDE boot delay. I haven't had the chance to try that yet, but you might, though . . . .

Does It Actually Do Any Good?

Not according to the quick-and-dirty tests I ran. Both Sandra and HDTach showed no appreciable speed differences between running SATA drives at 33.33MHz and 36.72MHz.

ATTO Disk Benchmark was also used, but the results were so erratic even under identical circumstances that no conclusions could be drawn based on that.

Nor were there any appreciable speed difference between the two speeds on those tests for a regular IDE drive, either.

Certainly neither showed anything like the 10% increase in PCI MHz.

So Why Bother?

It has only been recently that overclockers have been able to "lock" AGP/PCI speeds. Before then, PCI speed was determined by whatever PCI divisors were available in a motherboard. Overclockers often didn't have a choice but to overclock PCI (sometimes as much as 20-25%).

Not all motherboards support AGP/PCI locking, though, Via being the primary example. If SATA couldn't run in an environment in which the PCI bus was overclocked a bit, that would be a big disincentive not to buy any motherboard in which overclocking the CPU essentially meant overclocking the AGP/PCI bus, too.

Fortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case.

However, just because this can be done, the lack of performance gains means there is no point to doing this unless you have to.

So stick with the fixed ratios.

Click to expand...

there is nothing wrong with enermax if youre using a board that powers the cpu with the 12v rail (like the abit nf7's). my enermax 365 is perfect for the job.

I agree that Enermax is adequate but whenever the issue of choice comes up in the power supply section, Antec and Fortron are being recommended over Enermax hands down by people who hang out over there...

Depending of what kind of access you have to good deals, all things being equal, Enermax has a reputation as adequate but "overrated" in more than a few threads here at our forum... with all respects to the Contributing Member.

You don't have to build a PC as soon as you get to college. Get to know your surroundings, your floor, make friends etc. first. If you have a computer you'll spend all day on the internet and games - that's the last thing you need when you're stepping into such a drastic change from the environment you're used to.

7h3r4py said:

I just realised you edited your post



What do you mean?

This is what I plan on buying:

Asus A7N8X Deluxe (Rev. 2.00)
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton OEM
Thermalright SLK-800-U
Thermaltake Smart Case Fan 2
OCZ 1Gb PC3200 EL-DDR DUAL Platinum (2x512Mb)
Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro Atlantis 128MB
Enermax 460W ATX PSU (FMA)
Two DiamondMax Plus9 80GB 8Mb Cache Serial ATA HDD

Click to expand...

IMHO you may want to look at the Abit NF7-S. I ditched my A7N8X for it and I regret that it took me so long to do so. I agree on the issue of the PSU also. You probably won't have issues with that enermax but I still would recommend fortron/sparkle over Enermax.

Mark Larson said:

You don't have to build a PC as soon as you get to college. Get to know your surroundings, your floor, make friends etc. first. If you have a computer you'll spend all day on the internet and games - that's the last thing you need when you're stepping into such a drastic change from the environment you're used to.

Click to expand...

This is my second year of university coming up and me and a few friends are renting a house together so I already know people, the place, etc since I did all that in the first year. I am getting a new PC because a) my current PC is about two years old and is getting to the stage where it struggles with things and b) because where I currently live at home with my family my PC is the only decent one (the seven year old family P1 120MHz, 48MB RAM, a whole 1MB of "video RAM" and a huge 1.2GB HDD just does not cut it any more, even for web browsing, checking email, and word processing, I used it the other day and broke down crying at the time it took to just boot lol) so if I leave and take my PC with me they wont have one so my dad is buying my one from me and I am getting a new one. I will be living with two other people and four of my other friends are renting a house just down the street so we will be having some LAN gaming sessions probably just before we get our next installment of student loan as we will be so poor we wont even be able to afford to eat and there is nothing better than spending a day playing UT2k3 to pass the time and distract you from the stomach cramps because you do not even have enough money for a loaf of bread. Do not get me wrong, drinking comes first, then ladies, then PC But I still want a better PC than my friends, just because that is how things are lol.

Talking about my old PC, how much do you think it is worth?

Stock Case
Stock 350W PSU
Chaintec 7CTKJD Motherboard
1.4GHz AMD Thunderbird with stock heatsink & fan
128MB Geforce4 Ti4200
512MB Stock RAM
Lite-On CDRW 12x10x32x
16x DVDROM
60GB HDD
HDD cooler
3 case fans
NIC
56k PCI Modem (but we have DSL so this is a backup)

It also has a 80mm blowhole cut by my own hands (this should add sentinmental value lol) into the top and a blue LED fan. The graphics card cost me £110 (US$175) less than a year ago. My dad said he would give me £250 (US$400) for it and I think that is a fair price, but I do not want to rip my own dad off lol.

No offense (offence, UK?) to gator but I would have just ignored the silly "don't buy a computer, make more friends instead" advice instead of a full blown justification.

...you can always check ebay to see how much those things go for... good luck.

About the PSU..... Antec and Enermax are the only two brands that I can find which are widely available in England. Enermax is cheaper then Antec and after reading reviews I found it to be down to preference really. I have never even heard of Fortron or Sparkle, let alone seen them for sale anywhere. So unless anyone can tell me a real good reason to spend more money I will stick with the Enermax.

About seial hard drives..... so you are saying if I overclock the PCI bus I may have problems with them? Why would I want to overclock the PCI bus? I know about overclocking but not into that much detail. If I do overclock it wont be as extreme as having to mess with things other than FSB/mulitplier/voltage.

About the graphics card..... I refuse to look at any special deals of prices for things in USA because it makes me cry at how expensive things are here in England :\

About the RAM..... it took me long enough to find somewhere that sold branded RAM as opposed to generic stock RAM and the OCZ is the best I could find. Again, price comes into the decision and I read that the RAM I chose was pretty good. I know it is not the best but like I said before, I wont be overclocking to the max so I did not think the RAM would be that important.

About the motherbaord..... up untill now I was pretty sure which motherboard to get but now I am undecided between the Asus A7N8X Deluxe (Rev. 2.00) and the Abit NF7-S (Rev. 2.00). As far as I can see they are very similar so if someone could tell me the reasons why the Abit is better I would appreciate it. One advantage I can see for the Abit is it will allow me to get the Thermalright SLK-900 heatsink instead of the SLK-800. One advantage I see for the Asus is the power connector is on the other side of the board so the cables do not have to go around the CPU.

About the CPU..... I read that the 2500+ on the Abit board can do 2800+ speeds using stock cooling so I may save money and go for the 2500+. Still not sure on this one though.

Everything everyone recommends is just opinion, I go to other forums and they recommend other items. It is weird how it works out but depending on what forums you go to determines what the best or most popular motherboard/graphics card/CPU/etc is lol

Thanks for the help everyone, I appreciate all the opinions and advice, I just want to get the best I can afford.

c627627 said:

No offense (offence, UK?) to gator but I would have just ignored the silly "don't buy a computer, make more friends instead" advice instead of a full blown justification.

...you can always check ebay to see how much those things go for... good luck.

Click to expand...

I was gonna ignore him but I was bored and decided to tell my life story It makes me feel all warm inside that he cares so much though lol

You should be all right as both Abit and Asus nForce2 mobos are PCI locked so no prob there by the way.

Of course Enermax is adequate. This is all about if you have a choice to order the ones listed and for a similar price. Value does take precedent so I too would choose an adequate option if it costs a lot less, just as long as it's not a cheapo PSU which Enermax certainly is not.

On the other hand, no question it's Abit over Asus, dozens upon dozens of threads re Abit vs Asus can be found here. Browse the forum for them and you'll see.

I go to other forums and they recommend other items.

Click to expand...

Whoever they are, we'll take them on... , this is the forum to go to if you're overclocking...

c627627 said:

No offense (offence, UK?) to gator but I would have just ignored the silly "don't buy a computer, make more friends instead" advice instead of a full blown justification.

...you can always check ebay to see how much those things go for... good luck.

Click to expand...

Yeah man, who needs friends when you got a computer???


Or not. I'm just passing on what i learned in my years at college.

A-ha. Blame the computer for missed pu$$y alerts. Mm-hm

Hehehe

(sorry)

Well the only things I can see that the Asus has that the Abit does not is an extra ethernet port and two extra USB ports (even though they both have a total of 6, I am talking about external ports).

Is there anything else the Asus has that the Abit does not because right now I am leaning towards Abit, I just want to be sure.

I heard you could train the Abit's to make you lunch, it might just be a rumor though.