Wow, the Athlon 64 price cuts have really started to hit newegg now. Both on the socket 939 parts and the AM2 parts.
newegg.com
newegg.com
There is now only an $18-19 price difference between the 3000+ to 3500+, with the 939 models at $100 and $119 respectively with free shipping. There still seems to be a $5 price premium on the AM2 parts. Where I think it gets interesting is in the pricing of the models above 3500+. On socket 939, the 3700+, 3800+ and 4000+ go for $211, $239, and $296. On AM2, the 3800+ is listed at $165, but the 3700+ and 4000+ aren't yet listed. Also interesting are the Sempron prices, where the AM2 3600+ sells for the same price as the A64 3500+. Same price, 200MHz faster, double cache....I'll go for the A64 3500+. It's not quite as bad lower on the Sempron ladder, but it isn't exactly ideal, either.
What I think we are going to see from AMD is to discontinue the A64 line by sometime in the 4th quarter and Sempronize all single core models, while driving the dual core models down to the $130+ price point. We may even see such a move at the time of the July dual-core price cuts. I don't know how they plan on doing the chip naming, but with single core pricing taking such a hit, it makes no sense to devalue the Athlon name by selling them at the same prices as Sempron. Instead, I think they should make all Semprons 256/512K cache variants (1M cache Sempron would be a waste of die space), while eliminating all the 128K variants and the A64 series entirely.
Eric |
