Price Guide, June 2006: Processors

AMD and Intel Mobile CPUs

AMD's mobile chips are still stuck in the single core, single channel memory era; the Turion chips are basically mobile versions of socket 754 Athlon 64. They still perform quite well, and with lower power requirements they fit the mobile sector better. You might also be able to pick one up and stick it in a desktop socket 754 motherboard for some decent overclocking, but given the prices there's no reason to go that route over 939/AM2. We're really looking forward to the launch of the dual core Turion chips, as they will provide some much-needed competition to Intel's Core Duo lineup. Of course, by the time such chips are available they might need to go up against Core 2 Duo mobile chips instead. Here are the Turion chips we're currently tracking.


Turion prices have bunched together in the past few months, with the difference between the cheapest ML-30 (1.6 GHz and 1MB L2 cache for $143) and the most expensive MT-40 (2.2 GHz and 1MB L2 cache for $230) being $87. If you need a faster Turion chip than what you currently have, you might as well go all out and purchase the MT-40 [RTPE: TMSMT40BQX5LD].

Intel has quite a few more mobile offerings, though you will need to make sure that your laptop supports the processor you want. 945GM/PM chipsets will support Core Duo/Solo as well as Pentium M, while 915GM/PM chipsets and earlier will only support Pentium M.


Unlike AMD, Intel is still charging a hefty price premium for their faster mobile processors. The cheapest Core Duo T2400 [RTPE: BX80539T2400] ($250) costs more than the most expensive Turion, and Core Solo T1300 only costs slightly less [RTPE: BX80538T1300] ($211). We skipped the Core Duo T2300 because an extra five dollars to add 133 MHz is money well spent. Pentium M prices are a bit lower, but dollar for dollar we would give Turion the advantage over Pentium M, so for Intel mobile chips the Core Duo is the way to go. Celeron M (479) is basically disappearing from the market, so we didn't bother to list those prices as we're only seeing one processor that's still in stock.