I tried to find the pricing on inexpensive motherboard/cpu combo deals, only to see that the low cost deals that were available when I bought my Athlon XP 2400+s and motherboards aren't available. (The joy of having so many Athlon socket types.. with the 462 and 754 being essentially abandoned.)

754 pin combos lists my MSI motherboard and Athlon 64 3000+ for $155. (A little cheaper than the $366 I paid on Dec 26/2003)
Crucial DDR 3200 512Meg cl3.0 module lists 512 Meg DDR3200 modules for $55.

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462 pin combo lists an unknown motherboard and Athlon XP 3100+ for $125 (the XP 2800+ was 2Ghz)

Crucial DDR 2700 512Meg cl2.5 module lists for $55.
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Any less expensive, major manufacturer combos for the AMD world?
And comparable items from the Intel world?

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A quick check shows that an Athlon 64 3800 X2 plus a good MB at newegg is around $180 per core (pricewatch gives $167 per core). It will use somewhat less power, per core, than the combos you mention.

I like the Athlon 64 x2 3800+ I've got at work and used on FaD. But I was looking for suggestions on inexpensive replacements for systems that currently may not have affordable options for Ram to get to the Rosetta recommended minimums.

Personally, I'd like one of the 4 core 2+Ghz parts on a new motherboard, but I'd have to replace at least Ram & Video :) But they're making us wait.. *grr*

Any recommendations for Intel solutions that are comparable to AMD 2Ghz parts? (3Ghz p4s, for example)

What's the sweet spot for each manufacturer?

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Hi,

currently there is good bargain with the Intel Pentium D 805. It is about 133 $ and has 2 cores at 2.66 GHz. It is overclockable and then the performance should be okay (for a budget cpu). YOu can ran 4 models at once on this machine (with HT enabled) if you have enough RAM. The downside is it uses a lot of power... :-(
The best budget is at the moment an AMD 64 Sempron 3000+ for about 80 $ and is overclockable to 2.4 GHZ and draws very modest power. For Socket 754 the boards are very cheap and RAM is cheap as well.

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