CPU Price Chart - September 25, 2002

Notes and Recommendations: Here we see that Intel has continued to crank up the MHz on the Pentium 4, and there is talk that a 3.0 GHz P4 may be just around the corner. Wow- can you imagine it- 3.0 GHz??? It wasn't too long ago who 1 GHz chips were considered a major milestone. It's pretty impressive how quickly Intel has been able to raise the clock speed on the P4, and AMD seems to be stunned by this development. AMD recently introduced the Athlon XP 2400+ but it is still not widely available. So due to the sheer MHz power and the reasonable price of the P4 2.4 GHz, it is the choice for the best high-end CPU this time. The best value-based CPU has to be the Athlon XP 2000+, which sells at around $100. This means that if you're on the market for a new PC, there's not much reason not to get anything with less than a 2000+/2 GHz level CPU.

Best high-end, best-bang-for-the-buck CPU for this time: Pentium 4 2.4 GHz