AMDZone.com provided suggested Barton pricing yesterday.
There’s a couple pieces of good and maybe good news, and one bad one.
For those of you with older motherboards, while most Barton will be 166MHz, there will be a 133MHz Barton available. Update: Oops, that’s a 2600MP instead. Never mind. )
The other piece of maybe good news is that the low man on the Barton totem pole is somewhat reasonably priced at about $175.
The bad news is that the middle man on the Barton totem pole is priced skyhigh, and the top man is in geosynchronous orbit.
Pioneers Wanted
Hmmm, $400 is an awful lot extra to pay for a 3000+ over a 2500+ (actual MHz are probably 2.25GHz vs 1.83Ghz).
The question then becomes, “What sort of beast will these 2500+s be?” Will they be CPUs that just couldn’t cut it at 2800+ or 3000+ speeds? Or will they be just as good as their big brothers?
How good will the initial Bartons be, period? Remember, they’re supposed to be coming from UMC. Will they be able to run at the same speed as the latest Dresden TBreds, or not?
That’s what the pioneers will find out in about three weeks.
For Many Of You
A lot of you would like to buy just one last new CPU for your socket A systems. These fairly cheap TBredBs have been tempting, though.
If you’re in this boat, I suggest the following:
See how the high-end Bartons do in the reviews, and then see how the pioneers do with the first 2500+s.
If both are doing 2400-2500MHz, figure you’ll be buying a Barton sooner rather than later. It’s unlikely they’re going to get much better than that at .13 micron, and it’s doubtful at this point if there’s going to be a .09 micron version (though AMD keeps changing its mind about this).
If the high-end ones are doing 2400-2500MHz do considerably better than the low-end ones, figure on waiting a minimum two-three months before the cheap ones get up to snuff.
If none of them are doing 2400-2500MHz, again, figure on a pretty long wait.
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