Slashdot Mirror

it'll set you back as much as a PC that has the same features

Uh ... what? Last I checked, the cheapest price on a GeForce 3 was $260 (check Pricewatch). That leaves you a total of roughly $40 to spend on the rest of your PC for it to have the same features as an XBox. For argument's sake, let's just do a bit of a price comparison:

• Motherboard - $45 for a P3, $44 for an Athlon (Pricewatch)
• 1GHz P3 - $164 (see Sharky Extreme's Weekly CPU price list). Alternatively, an athlon 1GHz -- $74. Also, note that I'm using a higher speed CPU here, because with a PC you don't get the benefit of allowing the programmers to write directly to the hardware, so you need a bit more raw speed to compensate.
• Sound Card - $150 Hercules Game Theater XP (or, you could go ~$100 for an SB Live!). Obviously, since nVidia designed the audio chipset for the XBox, you won't be able to get the exact same audio hardware (well, maybe not until nForce-based motherboards are released).
• Video - $260 (the aforementioned GeForce 3). No other video card is worth mentioning, if you're strict about wanting near-XBox-level performance.
• Gamepad - $35 Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepad Pro (about as close as you'll get to an XBox game pad)
• Hard Drive - $75 40GB hard drive (because you have to install an OS, install games, keep saved games, and so on) (again, from Pricewatch)
• DVD-ROM - $27 10X drive (Pricewatch)
• Necessary accessories (mouse, keyboard) - $4 (if you're really cheap -- again, Pricewatch)
• Case - $11 generic case (Pricewatch)
• Memory - $30 (price for PC133 512MB, since more memory is always better when developers don't have the ability to micromanage the memory how they please). (Pricewatch)

Yes, I do realize that you can buy a PC for much less than that, but it's not going to be the "equivalent" of an XBox, either.

it'll set you back as much as a PC that has the same features

Uh ... what? Last I checked, the cheapest price on a GeForce 3 was $260 (check Pricewatch). That leaves you a total of roughly $40 to spend on the rest of your PC for it to have the same features as an XBox. For argument's sake, let's just do a bit of a price comparison:

• Motherboard - $45 for a P3, $44 for an Athlon (Pricewatch)
• 1GHz P3 - $164 (see Sharky Extreme's Weekly CPU price list). Alternatively, an athlon 1GHz -- $74. Also, note that I'm using a higher speed CPU here, because with a PC you don't get the benefit of allowing the programmers to write directly to the hardware, so you need a bit more raw speed to compensate.
• Sound Card - $150 Hercules Game Theater XP (or, you could go ~$100 for an SB Live!). Obviously, since nVidia designed the audio chipset for the XBox, you won't be able to get the exact same audio hardware (well, maybe not until nForce-based motherboards are released).
• Video - $260 (the aforementioned GeForce 3). No other video card is worth mentioning, if you're strict about wanting near-XBox-level performance.
• Gamepad - $35 Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepad Pro (about as close as you'll get to an XBox game pad)
• Hard Drive - $75 40GB hard drive (because you have to install an OS, install games, keep saved games, and so on) (again, from Pricewatch)
• DVD-ROM - $27 10X drive (Pricewatch)
• Necessary accessories (mouse, keyboard) - $4 (if you're really cheap -- again, Pricewatch)
• Case - $11 generic case (Pricewatch)
• Memory - $30 (price for PC133 512MB, since more memory is always better when developers don't have the ability to micromanage the memory how they please). (Pricewatch)

Yes, I do realize that you can buy a PC for much less than that, but it's not going to be the "equivalent" of an XBox, either.

it'll set you back as much as a PC that has the same features

Uh ... what? Last I checked, the cheapest price on a GeForce 3 was $260 (check Pricewatch). That leaves you a total of roughly $40 to spend on the rest of your PC for it to have the same features as an XBox. For argument's sake, let's just do a bit of a price comparison:

• Motherboard - $45 for a P3, $44 for an Athlon (Pricewatch)
• 1GHz P3 - $164 (see Sharky Extreme's Weekly CPU price list). Alternatively, an athlon 1GHz -- $74. Also, note that I'm using a higher speed CPU here, because with a PC you don't get the benefit of allowing the programmers to write directly to the hardware, so you need a bit more raw speed to compensate.
• Sound Card - $150 Hercules Game Theater XP (or, you could go ~$100 for an SB Live!). Obviously, since nVidia designed the audio chipset for the XBox, you won't be able to get the exact same audio hardware (well, maybe not until nForce-based motherboards are released).
• Video - $260 (the aforementioned GeForce 3). No other video card is worth mentioning, if you're strict about wanting near-XBox-level performance.
• Gamepad - $35 Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepad Pro (about as close as you'll get to an XBox game pad)
• Hard Drive - $75 40GB hard drive (because you have to install an OS, install games, keep saved games, and so on) (again, from Pricewatch)
• DVD-ROM - $27 10X drive (Pricewatch)
• Necessary accessories (mouse, keyboard) - $4 (if you're really cheap -- again, Pricewatch)
• Case - $11 generic case (Pricewatch)
• Memory - $30 (price for PC133 512MB, since more memory is always better when developers don't have the ability to micromanage the memory how they please). (Pricewatch)

Yes, I do realize that you can buy a PC for much less than that, but it's not going to be the "equivalent" of an XBox, either.

it'll set you back as much as a PC that has the same features

Uh ... what? Last I checked, the cheapest price on a GeForce 3 was $260 (check Pricewatch). That leaves you a total of roughly $40 to spend on the rest of your PC for it to have the same features as an XBox. For argument's sake, let's just do a bit of a price comparison:

• Motherboard - $45 for a P3, $44 for an Athlon (Pricewatch)
• 1GHz P3 - $164 (see Sharky Extreme's Weekly CPU price list). Alternatively, an athlon 1GHz -- $74. Also, note that I'm using a higher speed CPU here, because with a PC you don't get the benefit of allowing the programmers to write directly to the hardware, so you need a bit more raw speed to compensate.
• Sound Card - $150 Hercules Game Theater XP (or, you could go ~$100 for an SB Live!). Obviously, since nVidia designed the audio chipset for the XBox, you won't be able to get the exact same audio hardware (well, maybe not until nForce-based motherboards are released).
• Video - $260 (the aforementioned GeForce 3). No other video card is worth mentioning, if you're strict about wanting near-XBox-level performance.
• Gamepad - $35 Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepad Pro (about as close as you'll get to an XBox game pad)
• Hard Drive - $75 40GB hard drive (because you have to install an OS, install games, keep saved games, and so on) (again, from Pricewatch)
• DVD-ROM - $27 10X drive (Pricewatch)
• Necessary accessories (mouse, keyboard) - $4 (if you're really cheap -- again, Pricewatch)
• Case - $11 generic case (Pricewatch)
• Memory - $30 (price for PC133 512MB, since more memory is always better when developers don't have the ability to micromanage the memory how they please). (Pricewatch)

Yes, I do realize that you can buy a PC for much less than that, but it's not going to be the "equivalent" of an XBox, either.

it'll set you back as much as a PC that has the same features

Uh ... what? Last I checked, the cheapest price on a GeForce 3 was $260 (check Pricewatch). That leaves you a total of roughly $40 to spend on the rest of your PC for it to have the same features as an XBox. For argument's sake, let's just do a bit of a price comparison:

• Motherboard - $45 for a P3, $44 for an Athlon (Pricewatch)
• 1GHz P3 - $164 (see Sharky Extreme's Weekly CPU price list). Alternatively, an athlon 1GHz -- $74. Also, note that I'm using a higher speed CPU here, because with a PC you don't get the benefit of allowing the programmers to write directly to the hardware, so you need a bit more raw speed to compensate.
• Sound Card - $150 Hercules Game Theater XP (or, you could go ~$100 for an SB Live!). Obviously, since nVidia designed the audio chipset for the XBox, you won't be able to get the exact same audio hardware (well, maybe not until nForce-based motherboards are released).
• Video - $260 (the aforementioned GeForce 3). No other video card is worth mentioning, if you're strict about wanting near-XBox-level performance.
• Gamepad - $35 Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepad Pro (about as close as you'll get to an XBox game pad)
• Hard Drive - $75 40GB hard drive (because you have to install an OS, install games, keep saved games, and so on) (again, from Pricewatch)
• DVD-ROM - $27 10X drive (Pricewatch)
• Necessary accessories (mouse, keyboard) - $4 (if you're really cheap -- again, Pricewatch)
• Case - $11 generic case (Pricewatch)
• Memory - $30 (price for PC133 512MB, since more memory is always better when developers don't have the ability to micromanage the memory how they please). (Pricewatch)

Yes, I do realize that you can buy a PC for much less than that, but it's not going to be the "equivalent" of an XBox, either.

What about my laptop with two memory slots each with a 32Mb chip already in it

$36 for 256MB SO-DIMM

if your laptop doesn't use SODIMMS, then it's either really old or nonstandard.

And if you have older hardware then you're most likely not wanting the latest and greatest in computer software either. Anything that's > 3 years old is considered ancient, and you can't expect the newest software to run on it (with the exception of linux, which is designed to be able to run on those). Any commercial software will choke on anything > 3 years old pretty much, so you can't fault MS there. If MS did keep it such that it could run reasonably on those old machines, they'd be choking what their OS could do, and then people would complain about the lack of new features. They can't win.

likely to have to upgrade even to _read_ documents

FYI ever since Office97 all documents are forward-compatible and backward-compatible. Any features that are implemented in newer versions will be gracefully ignored by older versions, but yet they will be kept so you can open a OfficeXP document in an older version of Office you can still edit it, save it, bring it back to your new version and still have all of your new features there. It's pretty cool.

I believe they call these access points .

Where do I find wood? There's no such thing on Price Watch

I think someone is tripping.... I remember the PIII entering the market at 450MHz. Am I wrong about this? I looked on pricewatch, and sure enough 450 is the starting speed. http://www.pricewatch.com/menus/m3.htm

PriceWatch.com(tm) has the most up to date pricelist for all computer peripherals including these great AMD MP systems. Currently you can get a tyan mobo, single 1ghz MP cpu, and cooler fan for about 409.00. You can buy the lower end SMP mobo for ~250 and the higher end (with scsi) for ~300.00. CPU prices, motherboard prices and all other hardware prices are adjusted on a daily basis.

Buy up so the demand will lower the price. The tyan motherboard is a great board. You can get ddr memory (512 meg chips) for less than 30 bucks now!

http://www.pricewatch.com - just click on cpu/motherboard combos and select from the two mp combinations or simply select cpu, motherboard, memory and fans to build your own.

You just aren't looking hard enough.

C-X C-S

the Tyan Thunder K7 has been out for some time now, and I believe MSI just released a dual Athlon board as well. These boards use the AMD 760mp chipset and a "special" Athlon MP processor. You can pick up a Tyan Thunder board on Pricewatch for under $250 USD and the AthlonMP 1.2 Ghz processors for about $160 - 2x the price of the non-mp Athlons :/

If you want a ~$600 DVD recorder, you already have a couple of other choices.

At $629 on PriceWatch, the Pioneer DVR-A03 that a number of posters have already mentioned writes DVD-R at 2X, DVD-RW at 1X, as well as CD-R and CD-RW.

At $535 on PriceWatch, the Panasonic LF-D311 writes DVD-R at 1X and DVD-RAM (1X for 2.6GB, 2X for 4.7GB), as well as reading the usual CD formats, but apparently not writing any CD format whatsoever.

Currently, to the best of my knowledge, the only Linux software that can drive DVD writes is proprietary (sorry, there really is no good link for it). I am not sure whether complete information on how to drive these DVD writes is given in the SCSI-3 standards on www.t10.org or whether some additional information is needed. Any pointers to this information would be appreciated, as I might get ambitious one of these days and try to hack cdrecord or cdwrite to control these drives if nobody beats me to it.

If you want a ~$600 DVD recorder, you already have a couple of other choices.

At $629 on PriceWatch, the Pioneer DVR-A03 that a number of posters have already mentioned writes DVD-R at 2X, DVD-RW at 1X, as well as CD-R and CD-RW.

At $535 on PriceWatch, the Panasonic LF-D311 writes DVD-R at 1X and DVD-RAM (1X for 2.6GB, 2X for 4.7GB), as well as reading the usual CD formats, but apparently not writing any CD format whatsoever.

Currently, to the best of my knowledge, the only Linux software that can drive DVD writes is proprietary (sorry, there really is no good link for it). I am not sure whether complete information on how to drive these DVD writes is given in the SCSI-3 standards on www.t10.org or whether some additional information is needed. Any pointers to this information would be appreciated, as I might get ambitious one of these days and try to hack cdrecord or cdwrite to control these drives if nobody beats me to it.

If you want a ~$600 DVD recorder, you already have a couple of other choices.

At $629 on PriceWatch, the Pioneer DVR-A03 that a number of posters have already mentioned writes DVD-R at 2X, DVD-RW at 1X, as well as CD-R and CD-RW.

At $535 on PriceWatch, the Panasonic LF-D311 writes DVD-R at 1X and DVD-RAM (1X for 2.6GB, 2X for 4.7GB), as well as reading the usual CD formats, but apparently not writing any CD format whatsoever.

Currently, to the best of my knowledge, the only Linux software that can drive DVD writes is proprietary (sorry, there really is no good link for it). I am not sure whether complete information on how to drive these DVD writes is given in the SCSI-3 standards on www.t10.org or whether some additional information is needed. Any pointers to this information would be appreciated, as I might get ambitious one of these days and try to hack cdrecord or cdwrite to control these drives if nobody beats me to it.

If you want a ~$600 DVD recorder, you already have a couple of other choices.

At $629 on PriceWatch, the Pioneer DVR-A03 that a number of posters have already mentioned writes DVD-R at 2X, DVD-RW at 1X, as well as CD-R and CD-RW.

At $535 on PriceWatch, the Panasonic LF-D311 writes DVD-R at 1X and DVD-RAM (1X for 2.6GB, 2X for 4.7GB), as well as reading the usual CD formats, but apparently not writing any CD format whatsoever.

Currently, to the best of my knowledge, the only Linux software that can drive DVD writes is proprietary (sorry, there really is no good link for it). I am not sure whether complete information on how to drive these DVD writes is given in the SCSI-3 standards on www.t10.org or whether some additional information is needed. Any pointers to this information would be appreciated, as I might get ambitious one of these days and try to hack cdrecord or cdwrite to control these drives if nobody beats me to it.

The article says $15.99 per disk.
The cheapest I can see on pricewatch is $19.
So not at all cost effective with only about 7 times the capacity if you're just using it for backup purposes.

The GeForce3 is listed for $290 on pricewatch, which is certainly better than the $600 it was originally.

This was probably a troll, but it was moderated up, so there might be someone out there who is buying into this BS.

I hate to play the devils advocate here, but the troll did bring up a few good points, even if they were presented in a somehwhat inflamatory manner.

1) Incremental PC Performance increases

Looking over at pricewatch I see that P3s are available fromm 450Mzz to 1GHz, hiting every 50/66MHz jump, and a couple speeds are produced in both 100 & 133 FSB versions (AMD has essentially the same gig going). Joe Sixpack doesn't understand the concept of binning, they just see a dizying array of numbers, and get led around like lost puppies by sales clerks. Now, you and I may realize that we can save $50 by going w/ the 933 instead of a 1G, but Joe is really concerned about how much of a difference those 77MHz really make. The success of the x for Dummies books aside, most ppl don't like being made to feel stupid.

Again, it doesn't matter if the ecconomic pie is a limited resource or not, a lot of ppl are concerned about the current ecconomic downturn. Most people, when they hear Microsoft think Bill Gates, and most ppl associate Bill Gates with money. Now, even though Sony is a large multinational corporation, they're a large faceless multinational corporation. I can't see the average, slightly struggling American wanting to the personal fortune (remember, most ppl think Microsoft == Bill Gates) of the richest man in the world, when they can just buy an equivalent machine from Sony (which really has no connotation in their minds, save perhaps the Walkman/PSX).

Again... remember that most people can not separate Bill Gates from Microsoft. To them, Bill gates is the man in charge of writing Windows much in the same way as Lee Iacoca was once equated with Chrysler. Even if he has no say in the running of the company he's still the figurehead and mouthpiece, which furthers this along.

Besides, Microsoft was only able to successfully appeal the punishment, not the verdict.

www.pricewatch.com look it up there, try again. as i said, not proportinally, but per cd

What does it mean? It means that pricewatch.com is your friend.

A few days ago, I read a question online where the person wanted to know the fastest processor he could find to replace his (unbranded) 166MHz. He gave the impression of being ignorant (I mean this in the politest sense possible) to the current processor market and seemed to be unaware of the insane prices we see today. Why scrounge around for a PII 300MHz (for $30 admittedly) when you can buy a much more powerful PIII 650MHz for ~$90...or a Duron 950MHz for $58? Sure, toss in a new motherboard, but that also means USB, better and current product support, and a longer upgrade life.

800 duron- 305 $ = 0.38 $/Mhz
900 athlon 309 $ = 0.34 $/Mhz
1000 athlon 363 $ = 0.36 $/Mhz
1200 athlon 363 $ = 0.30 $/Mhz
1300 athlon 403 $ = 0.31 $/Mhz
1400 athlon 450 $ = 0.32 $/Mhz

(Note that the systems are not exactly the same, but all including windows tax.) If we look at this the sweet spot it seems the 1.2 Ghz system is money wise the best to buy. And the 1400 just a little bit more expensive but is faster.....

------ 50% of all statistics are lies.

What this means to you:

• Cheaper Laptops
• Local Computer Dealers Selling Their Own Line of Laptops (based on the ASUS,KDS base models)
• Laptops WILL bump out desktops for the mid-low, mid markets
• Desktops WILL be around for a while yet, as the ultra-cheapies (family room PCs *for the Youngins*) and high-end (power hungry video cards, huge fast hard drives that are needed for video editing, CAD design, game playing, music archiving, etc.)

So basically, a 1.4GHz will only be a few dollars more than the next step down, and so on, until you hit the next tier where it drops significantly.

For the reasons already mentioned, 3DFX cards aren't what I'm personally looking for. They're still good, though, and available if unsupported. Query Pricewatch for "Video Cards Voodoo 3500" and quite a few show up for ~$70usd.

Well, even with all the great price/feature-comparison killer-apps out there (pricegrabber & pricewatch -- the rest suck: dealtime, mysimon, pricescan.com, killerapp.com, ...), and unbiased product reviews, and fly-by-night merchant ratings (gomez, bizrate, resellerratings), etc., most people still don't use this information. Most people are blissfully happy to led by the nose into overpaying for crap with pretty packaging; and by overpaying, the CrapCompany(tm) then reinvests this profit into capturing more lemmings with more shiny object advertising. It's a vicious cycle of LCD crap. :-)

So much for that information killer-app living up to its namesake eh?

If a good "bullshit detector" were ever to go mainstream (i.e. integrated with the desktop) it would kill a LOT of business' that depend on ignorance for their high profit margins. In fact, in defense, more companies would probably start using the "EBay strategy" of calling their listed pricing information "private property," in order to kill off the pro-consumer clearinghouses......(unless said clearinghouse could be a distributed untouchable.)

make them call us every time they add new hardware to their system or try to reinstall the OS

Everyone sees this as a huge problem. Unforturnately, your not looking as far into the future as Microsoft is. Actually, you don't have to look far at all. Maybe a year or two.

Give Moore's law a bit more time and all of a sudden, we have integrated PCs that you really won't need to change around. Sure, parts may break but Microsoft seems to know that, in the end, it really won't be worth replacing them.

Disposable...

Today, you can buy a 700mhz processor for well under $30. This processor will run the operating system for Joe Consumer just fine. Combine this with a $60 integrated motherboard, complete with sound, networking and 3D video, and you have a remarkably cheap basis for a PC. These types of PCs are becoming prevalent today but what happens when Moore's law takes over and all-of-a-sudden we have remarkably powerful and cheap, integrated solutions?

If you take that 700mhz processor and eliminate the pins in favor of a ball grid array, you have just eliminated a large chunk of the cost/complexity required to get the processor onto the motherboard. Why bother with upgradability when the cost is so low? The same goes for the RAM. Get rid of the DIMMs in favor of soldered-to-the-board RAM. Hell, it only costs a couple of bucks for 256 or 512 megs on the stick. You can cut costs/complexity even more by putting the chips right on the motherboard. What about those pesky PCI slots? Get rid of 'em and create a firewire/usb expansion standard (think: a bay with power and a firewire or USB connection). Its not cost effective to have such redundancy these days - especially with the other, cheaper standards getting so fast (please note that I am thinking high-volume consumer PCs).

What your left with is a cheap, powerful and "disposable" motherboard. In two months, that $30 processor will be faster. In a year, faster yet. And the possibility of integration improves all the time. The nForce chipset (Real Soon Now) offers a remarkable number of features in a very small package - 2 chips. In time, this will be one chip (and better performance too). Whats to keep them from integrating the package with an entire x86 package? Perhaps this is why they are so buddy with AMD?

So here we are, two years from now and every consumer PC is shipping with WindowsXP and not a single complaint about this "pesky activation" from the trillions of installed base. When it breaks or you need to upgrade, throw it away and buy a new one for under $100 bucks (the PC, not Windows XP).

Yes, I hate the idea of Microsoft too but I use their software everyday because there isn't anything close at this point. For *me*, its either dabble with Linux, get raped by Apple, or work with Microsoft.

Darren

About motherboards: Do you know who is making the new MP chipset? AMD themselves--and according to all reports, it rocks. And it's not like Intel hasn't had its share of problems with chipsets. Sure, Athlon+VIA will always probably suck, but for the same amount of money as a P4+MB you'll always be able to buy a faster Athlon with a better MB.

I personally think the P4 is Intel's curse, and bad news for them is far from over. I would be biting my fingernails if the earnings of my company depended entirely on something as shoddy as the P4 design.

Anyone who's checked pricewatch would have to be insane to buy a P4.

"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"

I don't think that this is either good or bad, i'm just not sure it's necessacary. I mean, you can get 128MB pc133 on Pricewatch, and i can't imagine programming a game with so much bloatware that you need more than one meg to store VARIABLES!

I mean, when you get down to it, that's what a saved game is, right? Variables? So why would you need Gigs of text, when you could just market the End-all Be-all memory card for like $75, make $55 profit on it, and never require a new one. And it would be smaller, faster, and require less power.

I just can't imagine Gigs of
Gold=23316;
Exp=5299;
Level="AdvancedMage";
Xlocation=56; Ylocation=126;
etc, etc. Tha'ts a lot of text.

Check out Pricewatch, many system builders their will preload a linux distro on an order or even set up a dual boot system before it leaves the shop. Plus they allow you to hand select the components that dell won't give you a choice on, mainly motherboards or other video and sound cards than their exclusive deals with some companies prevent you from ordering. A2Z computers is who I had build my latest rig and I have been pleased with the system and their support, but shop arround and check with the BBB to make sure the company is legit.

They sell it here: Pricewatch

And if you look quick, you might even catch the price war over at Pricewatch. I've been debating the purchase of a new computer for the past week, and in that time, the price of the gigahertz Athlon chip has dropped 12%. In one week! So I'm going to get the motherboard and some ram delivered next week, and wait a bit to see how low the chip goes. It's already under 3 digits.

---

Just the other day I found a site through Pricewatch that purported to be selling Nanya PC2100 DDR memory with CAS latency of 2 for CHEAP (like $60 for 256MB). It's hard to believe, so maybe it's not legit... but I did a little searching on Nanya, and an article I found indicated that they want to have some double-digit percentage of the DDR market going forward.

Does this suggest low-end or high-end? Dunno... but thought I'd mention it.

- Leomania

Seems the 760 chipset is already available on the street: ugly pricewatch.com search query for the Tyan S2462. Price is about 580 give or take 20 it seems. (Of those shops I've actually directly dealt with essencom.com a few times; they seem to be a nice, reputable shop.)

(This suprised me as I thought what I've been seeing around the past few days were just beta boards.)

I wonder how long it will be until places like VA Linux and Penguin Computers have dual-athlon rackmount servers and deskside workstations for sale? :-)

Memory prices on apple.com: (pc100 SDRAM)
64 megs: $100
128megs: $200
256megs: $400

Prices for PC133 memory on pricewatch.com

64 megs: $9
128megs:: $15 256megs: $26

Unless you think paying $400 for something that you can get for $26 is somehow fair, I think it's you who needs to stop 'beeing a troll'. Looser.

Memory prices on apple.com: (pc100 SDRAM)
64 megs: $100
128megs: $200
256megs: $400

Prices for PC133 memory on pricewatch.com

64 megs: $9
128megs:: $15 256megs: $26

Unless you think paying $400 for something that you can get for $26 is somehow fair, I think it's you who needs to stop 'beeing a troll'. Looser.

Memory prices on apple.com: (pc100 SDRAM)
64 megs: $100
128megs: $200
256megs: $400

Prices for PC133 memory on pricewatch.com

64 megs: $9
128megs:: $15 256megs: $26

Unless you think paying $400 for something that you can get for $26 is somehow fair, I think it's you who needs to stop 'beeing a troll'. Looser.

I said about 350, the cheapest one I've actually found was 369 here. But there were several on pricewatch.com that were around 350.

The article says that the drive is $250; 10 Gbyte disks are $160; and 20 Gbyte disks are $200.

Now, why should I spend that much when the lowest price for a 10 Gbyte external USB drive on Pricewatchis $141, and a 20 Gbyte is $168?

C'mon, the form factor can't be worth that much, now, can it? Especially considering it's ``roughly the size of a handheld computer or PDA.''

b&

It's compatible with any/all IDE systems.

Two Steps two obtain:

1. Buy removable drive bay

2. Buy 20GB hard drive

Instant Portability! Satisfaction Guarenteed!

http://www.pricewatch.com tells you whether prices went up or down for certain parts. I've seen similar things for other industries also.

I know that isn't exactly what you are talking about, but some companies do provide this info, or there are other 3rd parties that help.

--Michael

> media only costs a fraction more than current CD-R media

$10 per 2-pack, according to another post. 1500% is a pretty large fraction. Note that's more than the 8x difference I cited for 2.88MB vs. 1.44MB floppies.

> drive itself is competitively priced with existing CD-R only drives

$250 vs. $80 -- that's stretching the definition of "competitive". And again, that's more than the 3x difference cited for floppy drive prices.

> this drive is bi-format

2.88MB drives had that; it wasn't enough. My money still says I won't be eating my shoe anytime soon.

cheers,
mike

The Gigabyte 7DXR takes 3 DDR DIMMS with the AMD 760.

In fact for 3 DDR DIMMs there are many boards you can use.

Try this Socket A mobo database

Look on Pricewatch for the best prices on RAM, 512MB PC2100, which has just dropped below $600.

So thats a 2GB Athlon box you can make for a little over $3000.

But for you've purposes a dual palomino sounds ideal. Try this one: On preorder from Rack Saver

From Pricewatch: DDR 512

I really need ECC which is even more expensive. There is always grossly nonlinear cost behavior at the high density end of the RAM market.

pricewatch.com

www.pricewatch.com

gotta love those sites that do that...

pricewatch.com

www.pricewatch.com

gotta love those sites that do that...

I ran the website for under $6000 for 2.5 years. We did this buy building our own server out of parts we found cheap listed on . We even upgradted the server TWICE (memory and went to dual processors). The $6000 included our colocation fees for the 2.5 years as well! Now if all the .com's could have done that! They'de still be around!

> The only ones that are applicable for me are a) constant computing (folding@home) and b) gaming; both areas where the P4 excels.

Actually, several of the review sites are showing that the AMD beats the Intel in about half the gaming tests.

And that at about half the price, both for processor and for memory, based on what's currently listed on pricewatch.com.

I'm also curious about folding@home. Does it run through a lot of memory? The review sites left me with the impression that the P4 gets its advantage -- when it does get one -- from the bandwidth performance of its horribly expensive RDRAM.

If folding doesn't use a lot of memory, then the Athlon might actually win. (Either way, it probably wins at performance/price by a large margin.)

If you happen to have access to both kinds of machine, I'm sure lots of people here would be interested in a folding benchmark, though.

--