IF AND WHEN AMD"S new AthlonFX "Thorton" goes on sale - and it"s not yet certain if that name is anything other than a marketing doodle, it"s unclear where the chip wil fit in the pricing scheme of things. The story is that the "Thorton" will be available at speed grades between 2000+ and 2600+ model ratings. In terms of its performance, the chip should be identical or just slightly slower because of lower cache-associativity than Thoroughbred, but how AMD intends to make any money on this new chip remains a mystery.
Consider Intel"s price structure: A Celeron 2GHz, perfectly capable for all sorts of office tasks and tolerable for gaming is for sale at $69 in retail packaging. Even the 2.6 GHz model can be had for as little as $126, and considering how well most Celerons seem to overclock, this is just a milch cow for the chip giant. The Pentium 4 is a very different story. A P4 2.4 GHz "C" costs $171, and the 3.2GHz model, if you simply must own one, could set you back as much as $700 retail-boxed, according to current prices from newegg.com. The price and performance delta between the Celeron and the Pentium 4 has allowed Intel to take even its lowest-common-denominator processor and toss it out the door at a low price, take a small margin, and provide the market with a processor with acceptable overall performance.
Now, in comparison, let"s look at AMD. A retail-packaged AthlonXP 2000+ sells for as little as $62. A retail Barton 2500+ costs $92. AMD"s line finally takes a jump upwards at the 2800+ mark, with Bartons at this speed costing $171, while the Barton 3000+ costs $244.