Why are Athlon T-birds cheaper than regular Athlons?

[Sunny129]

i am going to be building a computer from scratch for a friend, and i was thinking about going with an Athlon setup instead of Intel b/c i can save big bucks that way. i looked up CPU prices in Anand's weekly CPU/Video card price index and noticed that Athlon Thunderbirds are significantly cheaper than the regular Athlons. for instance, a 950 mHz Athlon Thunderbird is about $149 while the 950 mHz Athlon is $219. now the price difference between the two lines of CPUs @ 800 mHz is much smaller at only $10, but the regular Athlon is still the more expensive one. can anyone explain why this is? i was under the impression that the Thunderbird is newer, better, and an overall wiser investment.

 

[xtreme2k]

They are harder to find, there are less around, therefore slightly higher price. But this extra price is unacceptable since you are paying more for a slower CPU.

 

[Yuckysgf]

Supply/demand.

Also, because the Thunderbirds are produced on a .18 micron process, the cores are smaller and so more usable cores can be manufactured from a wafer.

 

[erub]

cheaper packaging also, a socket CPU (Thunderbird, well i know that there are some slot A T-birds out there, but not many) is much smaller than a Slot CPU.

 

[SiliconVandal]

Cheaper to make! Most Athlon classic's are Slot A, which cost's a lot more to make because of its slot design. It's also cheaper to make the .18 Micron chip (T-Bird).

SV

 

[FusionTorch]

Also T-Birds are being mass manufactured and classics are not.

 

[Shooters]

Kinda the same way that EDO RAM is way more expensive than SDRAM.

 

[Sunny129]

cool...thanks for all the explanations guys.