Interesting economics

[unixronin]

So, I've been researching parts for rebuilding whitestar, the machine UPS smashed.  It seems the price differential between rebuilding with an Athlon XP and an Athlon 64 is pretty minimal - $60 or so.  More interestingly, the lowest-priced decent socket-939 PCI Express motherboard (without SLI) is only about $40 more than the lowest-priced decent socket-939 PCI/AGP motherboard.

Here's where things really get interesting.  I've been advised to avoid the nVidia 5700LE and FX5700 graphics chipsets.  256MB GeForce6800 boards start around $350.  GeForce6600 boards start around $135 .... but as far as I can see, all GeForce6600 boards are PCI Express.  This leads to the odd conclusion that I can apparently get close to GeForce6800 performance while rebuilding the machine for $160 less overall by going the PCI Express route.

Intriguing....

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, both of those are pretty consistent with what I'd heard. Not that I'm big into overclocking ..... (though back in 286/386 days I did see some pretty significant performance boosts from overclocking the bus from 8MHz to, in one case, 11MHz.)