Athlon 64 3500+ PRICE JUMP again...

[GhandiInstinct]

The price of the highly wanted A64 3500+ has just gone up again. With this scatterbrained move...


http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-463&depa=0


Anyone care to explain?

 

[Noworkia]

AMD had problems with shipping and keeping the channel full because of SAP. Several places I checked showed back ordered or out of stock.

 

[FullRoast]

I think it's a case of Newegg got some in stock, no one else has it, price increase. If the supply ever settles down, the price will go back closer to AMD's official $346 (in quantity of 1000). I'm still waiting...

P.S. I'm a big Newegg fan, but even for me these price hikes, what the market will bear attitude are too much. I like Newegg's usually good prices, fast order processing, great order status, RMA process, etc., but this stuff leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Of course it's their business. Maybe they don't need consumer loyalty, at the moment.

 

[seacoastguy]

Originally posted by: GhandiInstinct
The price of the highly wanted A64 3500+ has just gone up again. With this scatterbrained move...


http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-463&depa=0


Anyone care to explain?

Those (expletive)-ards!

I suppose it's called Supply and Demand...with a healthy dose of greed and exploitation. Can't force someone not to take advantage of a supply shortage. Unless the actual cost of supply has risen, which I don't think has happened given the costs that I can see at wholesale suppliers like Ingram-Micro, TechData and Synnex, they certainly risk (a bit) of payback from their customer base who do not appreciate such opportunistic behavior.

It's like charging $10.00 a gallon for water after a Hurricane. Short-term profit...long-term ill-will.

I STILL have a backorder in with ZZF at a much lower price-point. If they don't honor it there will be Hell to pay ;-)

Chris

 

[o1die]

I'd like to try socket 939 too. But I found a 2.8c recently at Fry's for $150 with mobo, and I couldn't resist. I'm running it on a different board at 3.64. Not bad for the price. I will try 939 when the price drops, maybe in a year or two.

 

[GhandiInstinct]

With HL2 on the way and Doom 3 already out. A64 is the gamers CPU. Socket 939 is the best A64, so that's why many of us are getting upset over this exploitation. No one's buying the over priced 3800 and of course the registered memory FX series.

So maybe AMD needs to rethink their strategy and pull an even higher lead over Intel these coming up quarters.

 

[Zebo]

You guys crack me up climbing over one another for dual channel which makes very little differance. Nothing you'd notice for sure...But I notice $300 extra dollars in my pocket. Do youself a favor and go buy a 3000axbox for $175 and enjoy computer bliss now.

http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2065

 

[GhandiInstinct]

"Not that any platform is (or ever will be?) future proof, but 939 will provide its adopters with a broader range of options for processors"

"new addition of a dual channel memory controller for unbuffered DDR has no doubt given the Athlon 64 line a small performance increase"

"The main advantages to socket 939 will be the convergence of the Athlon 64 desktop platform, the ability to use unbuffered RAM in conjunction with high end desktop processors, and the warm feeling that comes from knowing there's quite a lot of memory bandwidth under the hood with a dual channel memory controller on die."

"Really, the added bandwidth of dual channel is able to more than make up for the loss of 512kB in cache."



Zebo: Not only have you proven myne and others points, but you have given all of us the more reason to get 939 over anything else. Thank You!

 

[MmmSkyscraper]

Think yourself lucky you don't have to pay UK prices!

PS the 3500 went up £4 yesterday, having gone up a £1 the day before

 

[GhandiInstinct]

IMHO they are losing customers. Because so much is going be coming out this next half-year that it would make more sense to wait. Unless....they lowered their rip-off prices.

 

[blakeatwork]

Jesus... I'm only selling them for $515CDN... guess I should bump some prices up...

(I kid, I kid)

 

[GhandiInstinct]

Jesus... I'm only selling them for $515CDN... guess I should bump some prices up...

LOL

 

[trexpesto]

When you upgrade, don't you pretty much always get mobo, cpu, and vid card? So why worry about the upgrade path? Socket 754 is soo much cheaper, you can get the 1MB cache, and you will need to save money for your VPU upgrade. Or is a 3200+ 1MB cache going to be a bad bottleneck soon?

 

[charloscarlies]

Originally posted by: GhandiInstinct
"Not that any platform is (or ever will be?) future proof, but 939 will provide its adopters with a broader range of options for processors"

"new addition of a dual channel memory controller for unbuffered DDR has no doubt given the Athlon 64 line a small performance increase"

"The main advantages to socket 939 will be the convergence of the Athlon 64 desktop platform, the ability to use unbuffered RAM in conjunction with high end desktop processors, and the warm feeling that comes from knowing there's quite a lot of memory bandwidth under the hood with a dual channel memory controller on die."

"Really, the added bandwidth of dual channel is able to more than make up for the loss of 512kB in cache."



Zebo: Not only have you proven myne and others points, but you have given all of us the more reason to get 939 over anything else. Thank You!

\

How do you figure? Zebo is dead on.

Think about it this way...you're paying over double for "a small performance increase". The 754 socket 3000/3200+ Newcastles are hitting 2.4 ghz with ease. I just can't justify spending over twice as much for the marginal benefit of dual channel memory. Once you factor in the higher costs of 939 boards and it just doesn't make sense.

And personally I've NEVER upgraded CPU's without upgrading my entire system...but hey it's personal preference I guess.

 

[Shimmishim]

i am going to have to agree with zebo here...

the skt 754 boards do lack dual channel but remember that the 3200+/3400+ have 1 meg of L2 which helps make up some of the performance difference...

the highest 3dmark2k3 score obtained by oppainter was on a skt 754 board with a 3700+

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?postid=528686#post528686


it is true that the 939 will be better suited for upgrading but at this point, i also cannot justify dishing out the extra money for an overpriced top-of-the-line skt 939 a64 board...

at least the dfi board costs $130 and the epox costs about the same as well...

 

[GhandiInstinct]

Dual-Core upgrade, instead of paying another $150 for my 939 board I just pay for the CPU. So how is it not worth it? And those 1MB 754s are more expensive than the higher clocked 939s.

-Peace

Also, the 754 board is $130, $20 less than the highly upgradable 939. So there's no issue with the motherboard prices.

To me 939 is an investment, and even if it's price is higher than your liking its still worth it.

 

[Lyfer]

Get an A64 3400 instead. Its less than $300 at most places and comes in a 2.2ghz 1mb L2 version or a 2.4ghz 512k version. Socket 754s are much better overclockers then Socket 939 boards (only Via boards for Socket 939) and you save $175 by going the 754 route.

 

[Shimmishim]

when the prices come down, it'll be worth it...

how is a 3200+ with 1 meg of L2 more expensive than a 3500+? or even the 3400+ with 1 meg of L2 more expensive??

3400+ with 1 meg of L2 is $359 at newegg while the 3500+ is $475... but was $380ish before i think...


well if it's such a good investment, why don't you get one then? but like you pointed... the price has gone up AGAIN....


when and if they release a 3200+ or even a 3000+ s939, then i think you'll see more people going into skt 939...

though the 3500+ isn't even close to being the top of the line 939 chip, you have to admit that even $400 for the lowest end chip is a lot to dish out...


skt754 is far from dead... with the release of the semprons, skt a will die and you will see more skt a people converting over to skt 754...

but you are correct about the board price... it appears that even the asus a8v has dropped a lot...


your comment about dual-core upgrade...

how much do you think a dual-core chip will cost? i don't think it'll be for the average joe-schmoe for a while even after its released...

 

[AnnoyedGrunt]

The only real proble for AMD and consumers is that everyone here is correct.

Frist, Dual Channel does not help performance that much.
Second, the extra cache of the 3400+ is very helpful.

What ends up happening is that for those of us looking in the 3400+/3500+ range, there is a significant discontinuity in price/performance.

I personally have almost always done incrememtal upgrades. If I start off with a new system, after a couple years I'll upgrade the CPU, then after a couple more years I'll buy a new system. In the past this has worked as follows:

486/33 ----> 486/66
Pentium 100 -----> Pentium 200
(Get's fuzzy here...I think I had P2 400 but I can't rember what happened after that)
3 years ago I had got an AXP 1800+ and I was hoping to upgrade just the CPU, but I have Palomino core and the highest I can go to is AXP 2000+ (not much point in that)

So for me, I'd like to get a 939 based CPU, with a 3500+ (or hopefully something even slower) and then in a couple years I could drop in something much faster (maybe FX-55 or something). However, with the current entry price for 939, it just doesn't make sense. To me, it makes more sense to buy Intel with the LGA 775 socket if you are looking for a long term Mobo investment. You can get a P4 3.4 for just over $300, which is a very good equivalent to an A64 3400+, and youget a brand new socket and a PCI-E video card which means you won't have to worry about an obsolete AGP slot in 4 years (AGP cards will probably still be around, but I'm unsure how fast they will be). Also, there will probably be some faster chips coming out for that socket, especially if you start off with a slower chip like the 3.0.

Of course, it might be good to wait for the 1066 FSB chipset, so you'd be able to use those chips when they arrive in the next couple years. And I guess that means it would be good to wait for the NF4 AMD chipset with PCI-e, which is what I will probably end up doing. Hopefully by then the 3500+ is more available.

Anyhow, I'd much rather get a board with a good upgrade potential, but I understand that it is pretty tough these days to get double the performance while staying on the same mobo (like I was able to do with my first couple computers). Still though, given it's performance, the 3500+ should be about $300-$320, and definitely no more expensive than that.

-D'oh!

 

[GhandiInstinct]

Grunt: I was following u up to the point of LGA775. Does the word unstable mean anything to you? Or perhaps BIGGER RIP OFF.

Anyway, won't spend too much on this but, you do know A64 out performs P4? For much LESS!!!!!

 

[Luthien]

I paid $365 shipped for my 939 3500 RETAIL and $151 shipped for my MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinum so the $100 more I paid was worth it to me. Right now however the same setup would cost an extra $200 over high end 754 at this time with price hikes.

 

[UUronl]

Well, two things:


One, there are a plethora of vendors on Pricewatch selling 3500+ 939s for $346. Retail as low as $359. So you might have to wait a few weeks.

Two, if you're going to spend ~$500, you should really be thinking about the 3700+. Kicks the crap out of the 3500+ 939 and the cheaper 754 mobo will help offset the higher CPU cost.

 

[Luthien]

UUronl, what are you saying? "Plethora available but you have to wait a few weeks???" lol, I think you left out part of your thoughts on this.

 

[imported_Funkatation]

I'm all for upgrade path... but I bought a pentium 4 2.53 hoping to be able upgrade to something else later, I bought a SFF PC with an 845GE. I had found a good deal at Fry's with a Celeron D 320 and 865P motherboard, so I was hoping to stick my P4 in the 865P and the Celeron D in the 845GE (which for all I knew would work, it was 533fsb, same socket, lower clock than my p4) but the Celeron D would not post in that board, apparently it didn't meet the voltage requirements. So just because you get a board with a certain socket doesn't mean you'll be able to simply put any processor in your motherboard.. (which I wish was true!)

 

[GhandiInstinct]

So just because you get a board with a certain socket doesn't mean you'll be able to simply put any processor in your motherboard.. (which I wish was true!)

First, you're talking about ancient Intel technology in my pov. Second, yes you can't put any cpu in any socket. But in this case, you can put a socket 939 into a socket 939 LOL. So, if 2.6ghz 90nm A64 is coming out next March, I WILL be able to put it into my socket 939.

Comprende?