Monday, March 09, 2009
Deal: Pick Up Intel Core i7 CPUs for Less than Intel Core 2 CPUs
It looks like the new hot Intel i7 prices are lower than their competing Intel Core 2 Quad or even some Duo prices…..however the prices of the motherboard and RAM tend to make up for it as DDR3 chipsets and memory are not cheap.
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Nice pick up, Earl. But it led me to look into Core i7 and now realize my "new" computer, as always, is nearly obselete.....
ReplyDeleteOh well. I would suspect the MoBo and memory prices will soon fall, so I will once again be in that waiting game of when the increased power is necc'y, and "the price is right"....
thanks for the heads up to avoid Quad Core unless it is a tremendous deal.
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ReplyDeleteIt's getting tough to place a well-timed technology bet on a PC. Core i7 Extreme prices are very attractive, as Earl noted. But you'll have to buy a motherboard and 3 GB or 6 GB of fast DDR3 memory before you can boot.
ReplyDeleteBut wait ... today's 45 nm LGA1366 chips will have 32 nm mainstream Core i7 cousins in just a few months, but with a different LGA layout. That means today's Core i7 920, 940, and 965 will not fit in the Q4 mainstream Core i7 motherboards.
If you want a really fast, 8-thread system soon, then the current 45 nm Core i7 is the path to take. You'll be top of the (Intel) heap for the rest of the year (which is about as long a life as you get in top-of-the-foodchain PC technology).
Otherwise, wait for the 32 nm Core i7 later this year.
That means the Core 2 chips are at the "value bin" point in their life cycle ... good for low price machines with good-enough performance.