Hi jim kelley; Your news about ASUS is actually more general, but not significant. The 761 based boards aren't being "cancelled", they're being replaced by cheaper (and probably better) product. All the manufacturers using AMD's 761 are switching over to VIA or ALi DDR chipsets. They're not switching over to RDRAM.
AMD only produces chipsets when industry (i.e. VIA &c.) can't make enough to ensure that there's enough for AMD's processors. AMD's business is CPUs, not chipsets, and unlike Intel, AMD doesn't try to maintain market share in chipsets. AMD doesn't sell their chipsets very cheap, so manufacturers switch to competitor's products when those products become available. No news there.
Micron still hasn't qualified PC2100 memory. This is true, but hey, when they qualify the stuff in the next few weeks, does that mean DDR is alive again? No. There are plenty of suppliers of PC2100 memory right now.
As far as the pricing for the P4 motherboard, why is the author using the price of the ASUS A7M266, when he just noted that it was being discontinued? The fact is that that board is being discontinued because of its high price. PC2100 compatible motherboards are available on PriceWatch for under $130 from several vendors. By comparison, the cheapest P4 motherboard on PriceWatch is $178. So much for P4 being cheaper. By the way, if you think that you're the one getting the discount from Intel you'd better think again.
Adding 256MB of PC800 memory costs you 2 x $142 = $284 on PriceWatch. By comparison, 256MB of PC2100 is only $201, again DDR is considerably cheaper.
Of course the AMD processor will also be considerably cheaper than the Intel.
And if someone doesn't want to piece together their own DDR system, they can buy it whole from Compaq or Micron. Around the end of April, more big players will start offering DDR systems.
-- Carl
P.S. 13 pages of DDR motherboards on Pricewatch (though some of these are misclassifications). Only 5 pages of P4 motherboards, and 4 pages of i820. When I search for "840", I get 5 pages, but the first four pages of hits are all printer parts, LOL!!! Searching for i840 only gets one page = 5 hits. Searching for AMD and 761 gets 5 pages of hits. |
