August 2002

It has been very quiet of late on the chip market. Both Intel and AMD have reported flat sales and no new chips have appeared in recent weeks. AMD do though look likely to make dramatic price cuts on their Athlon XP range in order to keep it competitive against the high clock speeds of the Pentium 4. Rumours currently circulating indicate that AMD have managed to make significant improvements to the "Thoroughbred" Athlon XP core and will enable them to reach even higher clock speeds. It also appears that AMD will move the Athlon XP to a 333 MHz Front Side Bus.

Lower speed Athlon XP chips are now priced extremely keenly and are the chips of choice in the market at the moment.

The Duron it now appears is being squeezed by the lower priced Athlon XP. When a Duron 1.3 GHz costs £57 and an Athlon XP 1600+ (1.4 GHz) is £63 the obvious choice is the Athlon XP due to its superior price/performance ratio. Duron's, like the Athlon XP are best value at the lower end of their speed spectrum.

Best value Pentium 4 chips in the sub-2 GHz market where the 512KB cache "Northwood" core is readily available. Whilst still beaten by the Athlon XP on a price/performace ratio, the "Northwood" is a chip that cannot be overlooked. The 533 MHz bus Pentium 4 chips are all still very expensive, although price pressure is beginning to have an effect.

The criteria with which we rate the processors currently available is simply what we judge to be the best value for money. Raw power alone can not top the charts (unless we think that it is significantly good enough to warrant a high price tag), and other factors such as all round performance and availability (at time of writing in the UK) also influence our decisions. We do not use a chip's overclocking potential as a factor in this chart, thus giving a guide to those who do not wish to overclock their CPU. Plese note that this rating is purely the opinion of the authors.

So onto the chart...

No. 1

AMD Athlon XP 2000+. Holding onto the top spot for the second month is the Athlon XP 2000+. The price has now dropped to £116 making it yet again even better value.

No. 2

AMD Athlon XP 1800+. This chip we feel is the best value at £79. Big price cuts have seen this chip fall in price from £101 to £76. It is pretty hard to ignore.

No. 3

AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (1.47 GHz). Priced at £69 the XP 1700+ like the faster Athlon XP chips is simply the best price/performance ratio chip available. We can see this as part of AMD moving the Athlon XP down a market segment to make way for new chips such as "Hammer" and "Barton" which will steal its limelight. That said the Athlon XP will be one of the best "value" segment processors ever seen.

No. 4

Intel Pentium 4 A 1.8 GHz - 512KB cache. Whilst the "Willamette" Pentium 4 was never the best choice CPU on the market, it's "Northwood" sucessor is far better. The entry level "Northwood" is the 1.8 GHz part which costs £164. This offers good performance with the i845E DDR chipset. Some price movement on the Pentium 4 this month it but is it much smaller than the cuts which appeared for the Athlon XP.

No. 5

AMD Athlon XP 1600+. At £63 this is just too close to the price of the 1.3 GHz Duron. Any buyer of the Duron would be tempted up to the Athlon XP with its larger cache size and faster bus speed.

No. 6

AMD Duron 1.3 GHz. It could be very easy to put the AMD Duron range in descending order of speed in the top ten. Like the 1.3 GHz part the 1.3 GHz Duron is based upon the new "Morgen" core and thus includes Intel's SSE instruction set. Yet another price drop sees this chip as £57. Much better value than the Celeron although it is eclipsed by the Athlon XP.

No. 7

Intel Celeron 1.3 GHz. The 0.13 micron Celeron still looks like a very good chip even though it has only a limited production span ahead of it. Essentially a 100 MHz FSB Pentium III as it includes 256 KB cache and hardware data prefetch, the Celeron is has now dropped to a very appealing £68. If you were looking for a cheap Intel based system, this is a good way to go despite the non-existant CPU upgrade path. Drops to Number 7 due to the price cuts on the Athlon XP. Isn't it nice to see a chip in this chart that can still trace it's design ancestry back to the Pentium Pro of 1995 :)

No. 8

Intel Pentium 4 2.0A. Pricey, but it is powerful. The new "Northwood" core gives the Athlon XP something to think about especially with a price of £192. If only Intel could match the Athlon XP it on price.

No. 9

AMD Duron 1.1 GHz. Entry level is now £35 for the "Morgan" core based Duron 950. Yep a truly fast 1.1 Ghz chip for only £35, shows how fast things have become.

No. 10

AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.8 GHz). Whilst Intel can sell a 1.8 GHz chip in the form of the Celeron for only £101, it can not match the sheer power of the "Thoroughbred" based Athlon XP 2200+. Priced at £210, supplies though are a bit patchy in the UK.

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