The Athlon 64 3000+, A Budget Gamer's Perspective

VL contributes a link to Viperlair's budget-conscious and game-oriented review of an AMD processor that's not on the bleeding edge, but makes a good showing for the money: "For the price of the Socket-939, you can pick up an A64 3000+, K8T800 based motherboard, and a decent mid-range video card. For gamers on a budget, I think the choice is obvious."

Comments

Re:Just what I was looking for...

[drsmithy]

I don't even know how intel stays in the retail processor business. For as long as I've been building PCs (4 years, I think), Athlons have been considerably cheaper.

Because the vast bulk of intel chipsets have been fast, rock solid and 100% compatible, whereas the vast bulk of non-intel chipsets have been slow, buggy and about 75% compatible.

I don't buy intel based systems because they're faster or cheaper, I buy them because I know they're going to work. If you've got the time to troubleshoot and/or work-around the niggly little problems that seem to plague nearly every Athlon motherboard (and in particularly, the cheaper ones) on the market, they're a better buy - but if you don't, then they're not. Most businesses fall into the latter category - an hour's troubleshooting (or even just configuring with extra drivers, etc) costs nearly as much as any up-front savings.