CPU Price Chart - December 9, 2001

Notes and Recommendations: For this and future charts I've made the decision to not show anything under 1 GHz because 1 GHz and higher chips are so cheap nowadays. There is very very little price difference over their 950/866/850/800 etc. counterparts. 2 GHz chips are even available nowadays. Recently Intel has really turned up the heat by cranking up the frequency on the Pentium 4, forcing AMD to adopt a different naming scheme for its new XP chips. The Athlon XP chips are admirable performers- e.g. the Athlon XP 1700+ runs at only 1.47 GHz but readily outperforms the Pentium 4 1.7 and even 1.8 GHz in most benchmark tests. The Pentium 4 is a good alternative for those who want to stay loyal to Intel, however, considering their prices aren't so bad- e.g. 1.6 GHz for $170. At the low-end AMD recently introduced the Duron 1.2 GHz not long after Intel announced the Celeron 1.2 GHz. Both are not widely available yet, however. The Duron is a better choice here because of it's better price, performance, and compatibility with current motherboards (the new Celeron 1.1/1.2 GHz require a motherboard that supports the new low voltage PIII/Celerons with the Tualatin core).

Best high-end, best-bang-for-the-buck CPU for this time: AMD Athlon XP 1700+