Overpriced everything

[professor]

Am I the only one that thinks prices on computer hardware are a lo
higher than they should be? Just look at the price of the FX-60 fo
example..

 

[Jamie]

isn't everything period overpriced lol

 

[Noozer]

Am I the only one that thinks prices on computer hardware are a lot
higher than they should be? Just look at the price of the FX-60 for
example...

You MUST be joking... A computer powerful enough for the average user is
dirt cheap.

If you want the very latest, then you will pay more. If you want the
hardware to run the latest games at the highest detail, you'll have to pay
for it.

WHY would you NEED an FX-60?

 

[John]

Am I the only one that thinks prices on computer hardware are a lot
higher than they should be? Just look at the price of the FX-60 for
example...

Almost everything is dirt cheap now except for cutting edge things as
was mentioned.

Im actually spoiled now.

Heres an example. Years ago someone asked me to look into laptops and
I was pricing the redhot Toshibas and IBMs which were the the hot ones
to get cause they had first access to the largest TFT screens. There
were waiting lists and they sold for 4000-5000 !!!! If you wanted to
save a bit you got the TI laptops for 3000 !

You start getting into the less than 2000 and then you got inferior
small screens and eventually lower passive matrix. Laptops they say is
the new growth field for the last two years or so with super cheap
399-499 deals going on every few weeks. Im not into laptops but a
neighbor bought one recently one of the 499 Toshibas and I was amazed.
The screen was big and beautiful and it seemed loaded with features
though obviously skimped on HD space and memory. The processor was
fine too though obviously not super fast but overall I was amazed at
what you got for the price. It worked fine out of the box even with
256 megs though the battery life was relatively short the main beef
about it.

Systems wise ---- I got a AMD 3200 754 with only a CD burner and 256
megs but a complete barebones system though no monitor and 40 gigs for
$200. I was blown away. This was at Compusa a chainstore. There have
beem intermiitent deals fairly cheap too though not hat cheap. Theres
one coming up but its kind of hard to get as its a clearance deal.

In the 90s I was jazzed to get a Sony 17" CRT monitor for 750 bucks !
In the beginning of the 90s I had a PS2 lowmid range $2500-3000 ! I
was grateful to even get a bigger hard disk IBM completely controlled
the mkt then when you bought into their microarchitecture. A few years
ago you were lucky to get a LCD 17-19" in the 300-600 range.

Last year I bought 19" LCD viewsonic for $200. I bought a 17" for 150
for someone I know. HDs are routinely $20-30 after rebate and even
SATAs are on sale once in a while now. I got a Hitachi for $19 last BF
160 gig. Memory isnt as cheap as it once was when the glut in 2100
was at its worst. Stores a few years ago used to actually sell 256
sticks for free after rebate. But 3200 has gotten reasonably cheap
after some pricefixing fines were handed out this year. You can get
3200 sticks 512 megs in the 25-45 range. Another item where prices
used to be reasonably firm which have collapsed are motherboards. The
good ones used to stay pretty high in the 150-200 range for a long
time and then get phased out. Now decent boards fall into the sub100
range fairly quickly. Dvd burners that were 200+ then 120 for a while
have bottomed out at $39 for a long time now and so have DVD blanks.

About the only expensive thing are new things like new sound cards by
Creative and theres lots of alternatives that are cheaper including
the free sound built into MBs nowadays and video cards.

Video cards were probably the only thing that was strangely sticky in
price for the last two years. The 6800 level cards seemed to be stuck
in price for eons last year. People predicted slowly falling prices at
the first of the year through out the year but they were stubbornly
high for much of the year. They finally have softened somewhat with
the 6600GT down to 113 sometimes and other top cards falling somewhat.
The bite in video cards doesnt seem anywhere near as bad too since
everything else is so cheap including monitors.

So in the past though everything was much more expensive a few things
like good motherboard, monitors which were unavoidable large costs are
now also cheap. One of the last things was putting together a decent
gaming rig. That even a little while ago cost 1500-2000. Now you can
even put a decent gaming rig for slightly above dirt cheap as long as
its not top of the line to pretty hot for a very modest cost. It
really depends on your shopping skills since prices can vary by 70%
depending on if you get a rebate deal or not. For instance I got a
free canon printer because I bought the 200 buck barebones compaq
system and used a combo rebate.

This Xmas I got a 26" HDTV LCD for $499 and I was PISSED ! Some other
people got the samething for $350 ! Im using it for a PC monitor now.
Next year I expect to get a 32" LCD for a ridiculously cheap price.

 

[professor]

I just miss the days when AMD priced everything in the dirt-chea
range. Remember right before the XP was introduced? An Athlon 140
cost like $150. It was top of the line at the time and was the bes
CPU you could buy. Now the FX-60 is priced so high you either hav
to be nuts or rich to buy it. DVD burners are cheap now because the
are old news. Wait for the blue ray and HD-DVD drives to debut, the
won't be cheap at all. I dunno, it just seems like the high en
stuff just keeps getting more and more expensive

 

[Erick]

Yes, but that was when AMDs were "cheap" processors. That's not the case
anymore as they routinely kick the pants off Intel procs. They are also
using a smaller process now, which makes the chips more expensive to
produce. And they have to get their R&D money from somewhere.


I just miss the days when AMD priced everything in the dirt-cheap
range. Remember right before the XP was introduced? An Athlon 1400
cost like $150. It was top of the line at the time and was the best
CPU you could buy. Now the FX-60 is priced so high you either have
to be nuts or rich to buy it. DVD burners are cheap now because they
are old news. Wait for the blue ray and HD-DVD drives to debut, they
won't be cheap at all. I dunno, it just seems like the high end
stuff just keeps getting more and more expensive.

 

[John]

Yes, but that was when AMDs were "cheap" processors. That's not the case
anymore as they routinely kick the pants off Intel procs. They are also
using a smaller process now, which makes the chips more expensive to
produce. And they have to get their R&D money from somewhere.

Yeah I remember the K6 at the time AMD still had slightly cheesy rep
and I went back to INTEL for a while after trying that.

For one thing you had to get closer to the top of the line just to run
new Win versions coming out and really basic standards in video and
OSes and other things were happening in the 90s still. In the last few
years theres been lots of changes but nothing really necessary unless
you want to play cutting edge games. You can still use your old CRT
you bought eons ago and I know people who still use a 1.4 gig Tbird to
run WIN XP fine.

You can buy a very hot system for not that much money either a AMD 64
939 single core or dual core. And they can be easily OCed to equal far
more expensive processors in the AMD line.

The only processor I want to get at the moment is the 3800 X2.
According to PC world :

How much faster is the FX-60? Our fastest test machine notched a
WorldBench 5 score about 8 percent higher than our previous top dog, a
comparably configured PC with AMD's 2.4-GHz Athlon 64 X2 4800+ CPU.

Overclocking the 3800 X2
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=192&type=expert&pid=14

Conclusions

We can now pretty much guess what the results are going to be to our
initial challenge: EASILY get the 3800+ processor to perform as well
or better than the nearly $800 4800+ processor.

The 3800 X2 has been as low as $290.

 

[kony]

Yeah I remember the K6 at the time AMD still had slightly cheesy rep
and I went back to INTEL for a while after trying that.

Perception is funny isn't it?

Yeah a lot of people that never took advantage of Intel's
floating point performance still believed Intel CPUs were
faster.

Then there were the Super 7 chipsets - the weakest link.
Plug a socket 7 AMD CPU into an Intel chipset board though,
like a TX or HX and you had an upgrade from Intel's Pentium
1 MMX in same board, so the CPUs established they were solid
and good alternatives but the chipsets and largely the
target builder of these cheap motherboards,
lowest-possible-cost-systems, ended up making some really
crap whole-system-as-product.

Then Intel came out with the Coppermines and they scaled so
well incuding overclocking that AMD had been effectively
shut out of even the budget market till Athlon took off, but
again early chipset issues plagued them. Intel doesn't
realize the benefit their chipsets had, apparently, else
they wouldn't have more recently been considering scaling
back or doing away with the entry-level chipsets that end up
in most OEM systems.

 

[John]

Perception is funny isn't it?

I remember back then was when the rumors started about AMDs running
hot and that various things were "incompatible" with AMDs. It started
then and I would always see those two arguments pop up. Of course I
believed it then but later even when it was kind of true ---- the
Tbird 1.4 was known for running pretty hot , it didnt bother me
anymore and I knew it wasnt true after that cause all the AMDs Ive
owned tend to run pretty cool and there are no "incompatibilities"
with the processor.


The only weird thing is this DAW issue but now that Ive seen posts
from people who specialize in that sort of thing who say a Dual Core
fixes the problem with AMDs for people who want to create music on
their systems and INTELS also have the problem to some degree --- you
have to use a wimpier video card , Im not bothered by it.

The data corruption issue I was all hyped about ---- I maybe wrong
again and Im sure those fixes work that are posted around the net
turning off TCQ etc but I really think theres a relation with how HOT
I think the nforce4 chip gets .

Ill admit I dont see huge spikes ALL the time when I use temp
monitoring software but much of it seems flakey - I have lots of
problems with Speed Fan and MBM with my board. Sometimes it works
right now I cant get SF to work with my board it hangs suddenly and
MBM gives some clearly erroneous readings sometimes when I check it
against my bios.

Anyway I saw a post of a review on a Gigabyte where they had hangs and
data corruption and they traced it finally to a poorly seated heatsink
on the nforce4 chip. They cleaned it and put arctic silver on it and
all the problems went away. I mentioned my Chaintech and many other
boards came with passive cooling which was a trend on the nforce2
boards. It seemed to work great on those boards I guess and it fit
with the trend of making boards quieter getting rid of the fan and
making it more reiiable since the cheapo little fan often died after a
year. However I saw lots of grousing in early reviews of the nforce4
about not having active cooling on the chip. I thought they were
crazy. However I noticed the nforce4 chips SEEM to run way way hotter
though its not reflected on the temps you can feel the heat coming off
the heatsink/chip. It feels as hot as my CPU ! In the past the
motherboard chip would feel fairly cool. I also noticed the passive
heatsink on my ASUS nforce2 was bigger than the one on my chaintech
nforce4.

Anyway -- on the later chaintechs they used active cooling after all
the grumbling. You can get them to send you a small heatsink and fan
which looks pretty much like the ones you saw on the old MBs. It seems
to work but I wonder how marginal it is if its true that the nforce4
chips run much hotter than the old boards. Also like the gigabyte
review I question how well they are seated. I looked at the one they
Chaintech sent me and it had some marking on the bottom like they
pulled it off a new board ! gunk on it where the pad was. I cleaned it
but not thorougly I should have sanded it and its held on by some weak
springs and pop on plastic holders. You can feel it drastically move
if you touch it gently with your fingers. It seems too weak.

Anyway after I put it on , my system after moving lots of data to one
disk to another HD started locking up like crazy. I wondered what it
was and I took the side panel off my case and mashed the heatsink down
on the chip just in case it wasnt seating well and it went away.
Frankly Id like to get a much heavier duty heatink and fan and mount
it more securely but for now the problem seems to have gone away.
I maybe wrong but Im blaming a lot of the data corruption and other
problems some are having besides maybe doing those other fixes to
improper cooking of the nforce4 chip eventhough it doesnt always come
up on the temp monitors. I did see it jump fairly once though when I
was doing data transfers - the nforce4 chip not the CPU.

 

[professor]

I just don't understand why anyone would even want an FX-60. I d
understand how overclockable the X2s are, and I know you can mak
them match or beat a FX-60 pretty easily if you have good enough ra
and a decent motherboard. Personally, I like the 4400+ for its 1 me
L2. It's more than 50% cheaper than a FX-60, and I know you coul
overclock it to eat an FX-60 for dinner with stock cooling no less.
Now, toss in $150 in liquid cooling and you have a killer CPU, whic
still costs over $600 less than an FX-60. I’m just not accustomed t
looking at AMD cpu prices and thinking “who is dumb enough to spen
this?” I don’t think an unlocked multiplier is worth the insan
markup

 

[John]

I just don't understand why anyone would even want an FX-60. I do
understand how overclockable the X2s are, and I know you can make
them match or beat a FX-60 pretty easily if you have good enough ram
and a decent motherboard. Personally, I like the 4400+ for its 1 meg
L2. It's more than 50% cheaper than a FX-60, and I know you could
overclock it to eat an FX-60 for dinner with stock cooling no less.
Now, toss in $150 in liquid cooling and you have a killer CPU, which
still costs over $600 less than an FX-60. I’m just not accustomed to
looking at AMD cpu prices and thinking “who is dumb enough to spend
this?” I don’t think an unlocked multiplier is worth the insane
markup.

Hey if you are rich and not into PCs --- well just in them enough to
want the fastest and brag about it despite the ridiculous cost I can
see it.

Ive never been in that position but theres a lot of rich people out
there and you know a lot of stuff about getting the top CPU is pure
marketing hype, bragging rights so it might not make sense to a
consumer now but it gives AMD stuff to trumpet in their ads.

In a sense it doesnt matter if they come out say with a 7000 AMD quad
core for $3000 a piece using really impractical production techniques
if they can claim its the fastest consumer PC chip in the world.

 

[dannysdailys]

(e-mail address removed)
However I noticed the nforce4 chips SEEM to run way way hotter thoug
its not reflected on the temps you can feel the heat coming off th
heatsink/chip. It feels as hot as my CPU

I believe I would concur. I don't have experience with the Nforce4
but I do with the Nforce2

I picked up a DFI LanParty Nforce2 board and paired it with an Athlo
XP-3200 and the Nforce runs much hotter then the processor. It had
stock heatsink from LanParty and I was amazed it didn't have activ
cooling out of the box

I put heat probes all through my system and the Nforce was really hot
So, I bought a HUGE active chipset cooler for it and it settled down
But, it still runs a bit warmer then the XP-3200 it supports. In al
fairness however, I have a TT Silent Boost cooler on the Athlon it an
it could almost be a refridgerator

But, I was quite surprised

I've had no data problems however

 

[GT]

I just don't understand why anyone would even want an FX-60. I do
understand how overclockable the X2s are, and I know you can make
them match or beat a FX-60 pretty easily if you have good enough ram
and a decent motherboard. Personally, I like the 4400+ for its 1 meg
L2. It's more than 50% cheaper than a FX-60, and I know you could
overclock it to eat an FX-60 for dinner with stock cooling no less.
Now, toss in $150 in liquid cooling and you have a killer CPU, which
still costs over $600 less than an FX-60. I’m just not accustomed to
looking at AMD cpu prices and thinking “who is dumb enough to spend
this?” I don’t think an unlocked multiplier is worth the insane
markup.

Couldn't you then apply the same overclocking and cooling to the FX-60 and
improve its performace by the same percentage (or close) that you increased
the 4400+. I know you are talking about what you can get for the money, but
I am just pointing out that you are doing all that work to the 4400+ to make
it as fast as the FX-60, but you could do the same work to the FX-60 and get
a killer PC! However, this would all be extrememly overpriced of course (as
the original question pointed out).

 

[John]

I believe I would concur. I don't have experience with the Nforce4,
but I do with the Nforce2.

I picked up a DFI LanParty Nforce2 board and paired it with an Athlon
XP-3200 and the Nforce runs much hotter then the processor. It had a
stock heatsink from LanParty and I was amazed it didn't have active
cooling out of the box.

I put heat probes all through my system and the Nforce was really hot.
So, I bought a HUGE active chipset cooler for it and it settled down.
But, it still runs a bit warmer then the XP-3200 it supports. In all
fairness however, I have a TT Silent Boost cooler on the Athlon it and
it could almost be a refridgerator.

But, I was quite surprised.

I've had no data problems however.

I didnt on my old ASUS a7n8x deluxe nforce2 either. However I was
surprised to see after searching scattered references to data
corruption problems with the nforce4 chip MBs when doing lots of data
transfers.

It just FROZE again. Its driving me nuts.

I didnt have any nforce4 problems until I raided my system then it was
a complete disaster. I then fixed it back unraided and now Im having
problems but I think as I mentioned its ironically related to my
changeover to active cooling. The thing is active cooling is better
but I remember when I did the same thing with an old KT133 chip board
where the chipset fan died. I had to find a chip set cooler myself
because I couldnt get an official replacement. I found some at COMPUSA
for chipsets but the system would still hang and screw up just like my
current one. I found out that its really hard to mount the chipset
cooler cleanly cause obviously it doesnt have the type of heavy duty
clips that the CPU has. Usually it has these disposable light springs
and plastic pins. Last time I tried thermal tape and that didnt work
well at all.

What finally worked was a much heavier duty blue orb type graphics
card cooler I stuck on it using arctic silver and super glue to anchor
it at all four corners of the heatsink.

I think when I changed over with the active cooling though its an
official Chaintech set the spring/pin mounting is just too wimpy.
Frankly Id like to get a more heavy duty heatsink and fan too but its
hard to find one that will fit a MB chipset except those wimpy ones
unless I order one and its $15-25 shipping here. I just checked what
the shipping for a MB was here it used to 15-20 now its 30 bucks at
most places.

 

[kony]

Anyway I saw a post of a review on a Gigabyte where they had hangs and
data corruption and they traced it finally to a poorly seated heatsink
on the nforce4 chip. They cleaned it and put arctic silver on it and
all the problems went away.

Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but I always second-guess board
cooling, pull off northbridge heatsinks and often put
heatsinks on southbridges that didn't have one. However, I
tend to ignore warranties and epoxy southbridge 'sinks on
partially because I don't necessarily trust frag-tape for
long-term use and partially because if I want best thermal
transfer it still requires more steps, like lapping down the
surface of the chip so the warranty is already void. So
warranty void but I can't remember having any board overheat
for many years and I never run boards with a fan dedicated
to a chipset heatsink (though sometimes on boards set up for
very aggressive overclocking, a nearby fan does have similar
effect if that's manageable), for example,
http://69.36.189.159/usr_1034/nb_sinks/1.jpg
Flipchips make it harder though, I need to find a good
source of sping-metal so I can fab my own custom heatsink
retaining clips.

I mentioned my Chaintech and many other
boards came with passive cooling which was a trend on the nforce2
boards. It seemed to work great on those boards I guess and it fit
with the trend of making boards quieter getting rid of the fan and
making it more reiiable since the cheapo little fan often died after a
year. However I saw lots of grousing in early reviews of the nforce4
about not having active cooling on the chip. I thought they were
crazy.

The problem seems to be that the quality of heatsinks and
attention to detail in manufacturing makes it possible to
cool them passively if done with care, but that it's easier
to just slap a fan on and not bother with better finished
(heatsink base) and care in mounting with good thermal
contact. Somewhat same situation as with video cards, they
just throw some crap on it if at all possible instead of
spending an extra $1. I can understand their wanting to
save (make) more profit but wish customers had the choice of
$1 more expensive board to get good cooling design instead
of having to pay dozens of dollars as much for some concept
cooling like a heatpipe.

However I noticed the nforce4 chips SEEM to run way way hotter
though its not reflected on the temps you can feel the heat coming off
the heatsink/chip. It feels as hot as my CPU ! In the past the
motherboard chip would feel fairly cool. I also noticed the passive
heatsink on my ASUS nforce2 was bigger than the one on my chaintech
nforce4.

You might be surprised how how an nForce2 southbridge 'sink
feels if the chip is lapped and the heatsink epoxied on.
Ironically it feels as hot or hotter than the chip with no
heatsink on it at all.

Anyway -- on the later chaintechs they used active cooling after all
the grumbling. You can get them to send you a small heatsink and fan
which looks pretty much like the ones you saw on the old MBs. It seems
to work but I wonder how marginal it is if its true that the nforce4
chips run much hotter than the old boards.

IF the fan keeps spinning, it should be plenty sufficient.
Big "IF" though, I'd never bet on such a fan working for a
decade and I build for that target lifespan... even though
I've never used a system for that long continuosly, but I do
know several people that have sub - 1GHz systems and no
desire to replace them any day soon... nor do I want to have
them brought to me because a fan failed.

Also like the gigabyte
review I question how well they are seated. I looked at the one they
Chaintech sent me and it had some marking on the bottom like they
pulled it off a new board ! gunk on it where the pad was. I cleaned it
but not thorougly I should have sanded it and its held on by some weak
springs and pop on plastic holders. You can feel it drastically move
if you touch it gently with your fingers. It seems too weak.

Agreed, many spring clips are rather poor, especially those
with the tiny wound springs over plastic (rivets?) pins.

Anyway after I put it on , my system after moving lots of data to one
disk to another HD started locking up like crazy. I wondered what it
was and I took the side panel off my case and mashed the heatsink down
on the chip just in case it wasnt seating well and it went away.
Frankly Id like to get a much heavier duty heatink and fan and mount
it more securely but for now the problem seems to have gone away.
I maybe wrong but Im blaming a lot of the data corruption and other
problems some are having besides maybe doing those other fixes to
improper cooking of the nforce4 chip eventhough it doesnt always come
up on the temp monitors. I did see it jump fairly once though when I
was doing data transfers - the nforce4 chip not the CPU.

I'd definitely try lapping the base of the 'sink, that alone
might help with scenarios where the chip temp looks ok but
it's being cooled unevenly. If that doesn't help enough
then you may need more tension on the mounting clips,
however you can mange to get it- whether than means reusing
same 'sink or another.

 

[professor]

Couldn't you then apply the same overclocking and cooling to th
FX-60 an

improve its performace by the same percentage (or close) that yo increase
the 4400+. I know you are talking about what you can get for th money, bu
I am just pointing out that you are doing all that work to the 4400 to mak
it as fast as the FX-60, but you could do the same work to the FX-6 and ge
a killer PC! However, this would all be extrememly overpriced o course (a
the original question pointed out)

Yeah you could overclock it...but as you pointed out, you can'
overclock it to the point where it is actually worth the around $70
extra you have to pay for it