How many of you would like a bottom-barrel CPU shootout?

[joefriday]

It seems THG has been really hit or miss when it comes to budget CPUs. I'm not talking about $100+ as budget, I'm talking about cheap as dirt, $75 or less. The Pentium E2xxx article was refreshing, but for too long THG has ignored the Celeron and Sempron. If you guys don't do articles on these, places like Xbitlabs swoop in and take all the internet traffic away from THG. Despite what you may think about where the money is at, the low, low end of the market has a lot of people interested. Just look at how many comments Xbitlabs received when they did their Celeron review.

Now, why am I even posting this? Well, as some may know, Intel will be releasing the Celeron Dual Core on January 20th. This is a historical point in computing. All of Intel's desktop market line will be multicore from this point onward. Now, THG has dropped the ball on the 65nm Celeron D release, the Conroe-L Celeron, and it's been ages since a Sempron review has graced the pages of THG. I'm just warning you guys, don't drop the ball again for the new Dual Core Celeron launch. I've attached a pole to see what interest the forum members (those that might actually visit this dark corner of THG forums) here have in this idea.

You could even make this into a 3 part series: Part 1: stock performance, Part 2: overclocked performance, and Part 3: the best cheap mobo ($70 or less) to pair your cheap CPU with, as well as recommendations as to what ram and graphics card to finish off this dirt cheap bang/buck build. One more thing: You NEED to do power consumption measurements, preferably both at stock and overclocked, or I guarantee that the forum members will lambaste you on this point.

And another thing, during your testing of mobos, if you could be so kind as to test for S3 standby functionality, I'd greatly appreciate it. It's truly surprising how many entry level mobos cannot turn off their fans when going into standby.

 

[Jake_Barnes]

For budget builds ... sure, do it.

 

[g-paw]

I image there are a fair number of readers wanting to put a machine together an expensive machine for a young kid, parents, or gradnparents. People that just don't need that much performance or simply can't afford it.

 

[mactronix]

Yay go for it this site is far to eleitist give the public what it wants sure a lot of us understand the tecno babble and want to know about top draw performance but if ATI/Nvidia make there money on the mid range /budget sector(and they do) then who are you to do any differant.
Mactronix