Pentium III 850MHz 100MHz FSB Slot 1--- 230.95 shipped!

[Nightwatch]

Link to processor at Buy.com
Price: $260.95
Coupon for return customers: -$30
Free shipping now

Total: $230.95

Note: This is the retail box with a 3 year warranty

 

[optoman]

You can also get a 700 for around $143 if you use the coupon. Be careful, they tend to raise and drop the prices at different times of the day. I have seen the 700 go from $173 to $190 in a couple of hours.

Edit: Oops, I forgot to mention that this is for the FCPGA, flip-chip not the slot 1.

 

[Nightwatch]

Which is better? Flip chip or slot 1?

 

[InsaneMorphius]

FC-PGA most folks would say as its is easier on the heat

Morphius

 

[Nessism]

Slot 1 or FC-PGA will perform the same. I would go slot 1 since I assume you have a slot 1 motherboard. On the other hand, coolers for slot 1 chips are more expensive if you plan on overclocking.
Please note that a chip that runs at a 100mhz FSB will not perform a well as a chip with a 133mhz FSB assuming you are not overclocking. If you are not overclocking, try to get a 866mhz chip since these use a 133mhz FSB.
850e chips do not overclock all that well or so I have read. For $230, you can pick up a 700e with a nice cooler that will run over 1Ghz in the For Sale Forum. A 700 at a 140mhz FSB will run great as long as you have the memory to support it. Good luck.

 

[Nightwatch]

Wouldn't it be better to buy the 850 at 100 FSB and overclock to 133. This is not anunusually high bus speed and as long as you have PC133 memory there should be no problems.

8.5 (multiplier) X 100 (bus speed normal) = 850 MHz
8.5 (multiplier) X 133 (bus speed overclocked) = 1130 MHz

 

[tran1981]

Not many 850mhz @100fsb can do 133fsb.

 

[dealgod]

to bad all the $30 off $150 coupons got zapped

 

[gammaguns]

why even buy this for $230? I'd rather buy an athlon thunderbird at the same clock speed and a mobo for the same price. The athlon thunderbird is fast as or faster than the PIII anyways. Wish I could get rid of my 550 o/c to 733 PIII and its mobo (msi 6309) to get an athlon. Anyone interested? I'll sell it for $200 for the set. Heck, I'll even give you the processor, mobo, and a brand new, unopened 128mb stick of Kingston ram (which is made of infineon chips that will do cas 222 at 133mhz) for $250.

 

[Nightwatch]

Back to the deal... Is this a good price or what?

 

[craftech]

First of all, the concern with overclocking is the AGP bus. Bx boards overclocked to 133MHZ will run the AGP bus at 89MHZ. Many graphics cards can't handle that without crashes and/or data loss. If you have a PCI graphics card it will run at 33MHZ like it is supposed to so you may be OK.
Secondly, that $260 price at Buy.com on the PIII 850 has remained static for a very long time. However, with the $30 off coupon it has been a consistently good price for that particular retail processor. The lower speed processors such as the PIII 600E or 700E have always been more overclockable than the faster processors simply because of the room for overclocking, but the AGP bus problem remains a reality, so the PIII 850 is the wisest choice if you are in the market for a reasonably priced fast processor for a BX chipset. Get the slot 1 version either way, they are better built and you don't have to worry about a failed slotket adapter destroying a fragile FCPGA processor.

John

 

[BradS]

Sorry double post

 

[BradS]

To summarize:

Good deal if your motherboard does not "officially" support 133 FSB.

Bad deal if your motherboard/memory supports 133 FSB. Go with a 133 FSB processor for better performance.

 

[Nightwatch]

Confused.

Why would I buy a 850 at 133 FSB rather then a 850 as 100FSB. Even if I jump the bus speed up to 110 FSB that would have that processor running at 935 MHz. If I had a 133 FSB chip I would have no room to overclock....

 

[Hulk]

A bought a PIII850 FC-PGA from buy.com a few months ago right after the Intel price drop. It was 258-30=228 shipped.

I stuggled with the same issue you are.

Slot 1 or FC-PGA? I went FC-PGA for a few reasons:

It was a bit cheaper.
My next mobo upgrade will probably be 815 so I can use this chip in that mobo.
Most likely better resale since there are more and more 815 boards out there.

700 or 850?

700 can overclock but not without AGP stability issues and new memory on my BX board, I need my primary system rock solid. This is not as reliable as the old 300a to 450 since AGP is out of spec.


I've been very happy with the PIII850. Big performance jump from the 450a. 100% stable. The only other option is the 1000MHz PIII with the 10 multiplier. Right now the price is way too high though. Also, the 10 multiplier starts to really hinder performance.

I would have gone Athlon except the main reason I needed a cpu upgrade was to run MediaStudio Pro 6.0 (video editing), this program makes good use of SSE so that ruled out the Athlon. I wish I could have found some direct comparisons of Athlon and PIII on this app. I still wonder if a 1100MHz Athlon would have been faster than my PIII850 based on MHz and better fpu of the Athlon.

Anyone with an Athlon run MS Pro 6.0? We could set up some tests and compare...

 

[Mookie]

I went with the PIII 700 from buy.com for 150.00 delivered (it has since dropped $7.00). Anyway, I received it Thursday and just opened it this morning and what a suprise. The retail box was shrink wrapped and properly sealed, but the plastic case, inside the box, that holds the cpu and heatsink was open. In addition, the white thermal compound was smeared on both the cpu and heatsink. ie... someone had at least installed the heatsink on the cpu and probably had it in their system. I can't belive either buy.com or intel has repackaged a returned cpu and sold it as new, with the thermal coupound smeared all over it!!:Q I'm not really knocking buy.com as I have been a happy customer of theirs for sometime, I just have never seen anything like this before. Just a heads up!

 

[Crazybubba]

Mookie, you should inspect the shrinkwrap carefully before opening. If it is original, it should have Intel Corporation watermarks on it. Its very light marking but if you hold it up ot the light, you can easily see it. BTW, almost anyone can shrinkwarp so don't assume that buy.com or ingram micro did it. It was probably a return.

CB

 

[IITravel]

If you live near a Fry's, check out the current ad at www.Frysad.com. You can get a PIII 850MHz SECC2 CPU and SOYO motherboard for $289.

 

[Mookie]

Crazy Bubba,

Hey, thanks for the tip. Sure enough, no watermark!! I'm more annoyed than anything, I've got to return this one then wait until the end of next week to get the new one. grumble, grumble...

Mookie