Pogo Linux: 1GHz for under $1000

1GHz and 256MB for under $1000

A year ago you wouldn't have thought it possible to find a sub-$1000 PC outfitted with a 1GHz processor. However today, powered by AMD's incredible clock speed ramp and price cut frenzy, the 1GHz Athlon (Thunderbird) can be had for under $200. This fits perfectly into the $999 system cost of the Altura and offers superb performance at a very low price point.

Remember the days when the best you could get for under $200 was a Celeron? And remember you being happy about that purchase? We have come a long way in just two years.

As with all "customizable" systems, Pogo does offer a few different processor options. They have an Athlon 800 (Thunderbird) downgrade option that will save you approximately $50 but unless you specifically need to be under a certain price ceiling we'd strongly recommend against taking that downgrade.

In terms of upgrades, at the time of publication there were two available CPU upgrades. The first a $130+ upgrade to a 1.1GHz Athlon and the second a $230+ upgrade to a 1.2GHz Athlon. Note that these are both the 100MHz DDR FSB versions of the Athlon and not the 133MHz Athlon-C parts that were announced alongside the AMD 760 chipset. In any case, the $100 - $250 increase in price isn't worth the marginal performance benefits you'll gain. While you will be able to say that you have a 1.1 or 1.2GHz processor you'd be better off connecting those bridges and pocketing the $100 - $250 difference.

Currently, because of the decreasing price of memory, Pogo outfits their Altura systems with 256MB of PC133 SDRAM by default. Since we received our test system a little while ago, the configuration we received only featured 128MB. The module that came with our system was a generic PCB using Micron -75C 64Mbit chips. A total of 16 chips are present on the 128MB PC133 module and they are rated at CAS3.

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As we just mentioned the Altura now ships with 256MB instead of the 128MB our system was configured with, but you can save around $40 by choosing to only configure it with 128MB. Considering the relatively low price premium for 256MB, we would suggest against changing that configuration option unless you happen to have 128MB of PC133 SDRAM just sitting around.

Pogo does offer upgrades to 512MB and 768MB priced at $215 and $368 respectively, but you should only get these upgrades if you absolutely need them.