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[Bigfoot]

I was looking at building a new PC back in January, and I put together a system in a spreadsheet, but decided it was over my budget, so I'd wait a few months before I bought the parts and put it together.

Anyways, I've been checking the prices every few months, and it is only about $50 cheaper to build today than it was 5 months ago. What ever happened to rapidly falling PC prices??? There has to be something coming out soon that will start a price drop.

For reference, I was looking at an A64 25003400 Socket 939 with a PCIe motherboard and a 6600GT video card along with the standard PC parts (DVD burner, hardrive,...). So it's not exactly top of the line, but it's still pretty good.

 

[Tarazet]

The A64 has no competition. When Intel comes out with their 64-bit processor and Sony comes out with CELL, things will happen.

 

[Tarazet]

Oh, and don't forget Longhorn still hasn't been released.

 

[pestul]

A64 3500+ and below have been selling tremendously, so they haven't seen a need to drop it in price. Motherboards have been going up due to the addition of many features (Gigabit/SLI ect.).

Take the A64 3800+ for example.. (according to Sharkyextreme's cpu price guides)
End of January: ~$622
Last week: ~$366

Memory always fluctuates and is unpredictable. It's actually higher priced now than it was in January. Videocards will drop in price after the R520 and G70 are revealed on paper.

 

[Bigfonzie]

wow cell pc's, id like to see what cell is going to do, to the pc market, will longhorn run on it?

 

[teiresias]

I wouldn't hold your breathe waiting for a Cell-based PC.

 

[Tarazet]

I wouldn't hold your breathe waiting for a Cell-based PC.

...Why not? If it's going to be used in something as mass-market as the PS3, then doesn't it also make sense to use it in other applications which require similar capabilities? To put out a gaming machine which is more powerful than consumer-PC technology is unheard of, and unprecedented.

 

[Zaptruder]

I wouldn't hold your breathe waiting for a Cell-based PC.

Cell based linux systems?

Possibly. If so... ooh.

 

[pestul]

...Why not? If it's going to be used in something as mass-market as the PS3, then doesn't it also make sense to use it in other applications which require similar capabilities? To put out a gaming machine which is more powerful than consumer-PC technology is unheard of, and unprecedented.

Intel & AMD will surely bump thier roadmaps up to go after this market.. somehow I don't think Microsoft would let Cell (specifically) take off in the desktop market.

 

[Tarazet]

Intel & AMD will surely bump thier roadmaps up to go after this market.. somehow I don't think Microsoft would let Cell (specifically) take off in the desktop market.

I just don't see how Sony could put Cell in a $300-500 gaming machine without also putting it in a high-profit $2000+ PC. It would be really dumb of them to produce an expensive processor and only put it in a machine that will produce a loss on each unit sold.

 

[tedtropy]

I just don't see how Sony could put Cell in a $300-500 gaming machine without also putting it in a high-profit $2000+ PC. It would be really dumb of them to produce an expensive processor and only put it in a machine that will produce a loss on each unit sold.

It's not so much about implementing the hardware as having software to support it. You can't just throw Windows on a Cell-based system. The OS would have to totally be rewritten and the chances of Microsoft supporting such a thing are pretty slim at the moment, especially considering it would involve a console competitor's hardware. No Windows = no mass PC market for Cell.

 

[pestul]

I just don't see how Sony could put Cell in a $300-500 gaming machine without also putting it in a high-profit $2000+ PC. It would be really dumb of them to produce an expensive processor and only put it in a machine that will produce a loss on each unit sold.

I don't see too many EEs running in PCs.. I say it will be the same.

EDIT: But on a different scale R&D wise obviously. As many articles have pointed out, the technology in Cell isn't new as has been tried before. Sony/IBM have gotten it right, but I think the destop environment is going to follow the multi-core/threaded x86 architecture for a while still. Microsoft still does hold the trump card.

 

[Diablos]

Cell is a completely different architecture; you'll never see it running on a Windows PC.
Perhaps a specialized Linux distro, but even then... Cell won't make much money in the PC market.

I agree, though. The cheapest Socket 939 AMD CPU is like $150, and that's pretty expensive for AMD.

 

[Tarazet]

Then how are they planning to make money off of it? What I've heard from the literature is that Cell is supposed to be "scalable," and adaptable to many different applications. Maybe they're thinking more commercial/industrial?

 

[Jeffahn]

To put out a gaming machine which is more powerful than consumer-PC technology is unheard of, and unprecedented.

Assuming you're talking about graphical power, then consoles have always been a good measure more capable than the best PC tech at the time of launch, and always tend to remain competative for most of the rest of their lives. PC tech always sounds good on paper hardly ever comes close to being fully realised due to the nature of the market and the lack of a fixed platform (something MS is trying to remedy to some degree with XNA and Longhorn).

...

 

[Bigfonzie]

Apple could use cell.... (?)

 

[Sqrt_minus_one]

I beleive IBM has already deonstrated a cell based linux server.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23304

 

[Phoenix]

Apple could use cell.... (?)

Probably not. Cell is a huge vector processor which is stupidly fast at processing in-order instructions which entails very shallow pipelines of instructions. Your garden variety processor from AMD, Intel, IBM is a standard out-or-order processing monster which can deal with processing instructions in whatever order they arrive. They employ deep pipelines for this and manage their operations entirely different from the way Cell is designed to work efficiently. This is likely why Apple has already come out and said that they have no interest in Cell. Cell is not a general purpose CPU. It is a very specialized CPU for crunching large volumes of floating point data.

 

[Andy787]

It's not so much about implementing the hardware as having software to support it. You can't just throw Windows on a Cell-based system. The OS would have to totally be rewritten and the chances of Microsoft supporting such a thing are pretty slim at the moment, especially considering it would involve a console competitor's hardware. No Windows = no mass PC market for Cell.

"Let's make a deal. "

 

[element]

RAM prices are dropping like crazy. I bought 512 MB PC 3200 just 3 months ago for $80. You can find it now for $35.