Price Guide, June 2006: Processors

AMD Single Core/Midrange CPUs

Moving on to the mainstream offerings, prices become far more attractive on the AMD side. There have also been some major price cuts recently, dropping even some of the fastest single core offerings into the mainstream/budget price ranges. Check out the price graph on the Athlon 64 3800+.



If all you really care about is gaming performance, a fast Athlon 64 processor is currently the best price/performance offering. At the previous price of $280, the 3800+ would have been a tough sell, but for $147 it's a great buy [RTPE: ADA3800BPBOX]. Unfortunately, the great prices don't extend to the San Diego cores, so our recommendation is to either spend the money for the X2 chips or stick with the Venice cores. Here are the complete price lists for single core Athlon 64 processors for sockets 939 and AM2. (Please disregard the FX chips that show up; the granularity of our filtering has some limitations.)


After carrying an initial price premium, the AM2 processors have once again matched their 939 counterparts in terms of price. For the overclocking enthusiast that doesn't want dual cores, the most attractive option on either socket is the 3200+: [RTPE: ADA3200BPBOX] $98 for socket 939 and [RTPE: ADA3200CNBOX] $105 for AM2. The reason we recommend the 3200+ over the 3000+ for overclocking is that the 10X CPU multiplier provides a bit more flexibility, and we feel it's worth the extra $10-$15. If you're willing to spend a bit more, the AM2 3800+ [RTPE: ADA3800CNBOX] at $149 is a great midrange pick for AMD's new platform. Perhaps it will be enough to keep you happy while you wait for the quad core chips to arrive?