CPU Price Chart - April 22, 2003

Notes and Recommendations: Since the last chart there really hasn't been too much movement in prices for Intel chips. The biggest drops are in the 2.8 and 3.06 GHz P4, but other chips haven't gone down as fast as we've experienced in recent years. The AMD Athlon XP's, on the hand, have come down significantly in price, especially in the 2000+ and faster models. AMD probably has had to be more aggressive in pricing to stem their loss of market share in the past year. But AMD has the Opteron up its sleeve and is actually introducing it today. In early benchmarks in appears that the chip has a notable advantage in the server environment, especially if the software is 64-bit. But in Windows XP, strictly a 32-bit environment, it performs about about the same level as an Athlon XP, which is still not bad at all considering AMD is not pricing the Opteron through the roof.

Best high-end, best-bang-for-the-buck CPU for this time: AMD Athlon XP 2700+