Did not realize that SB would be available that quickly, wonder if the price will skyrocket shortly after launch or if they will have plenty on hand.
Intel usually has hard launches. Micro Center isn't like Newegg - they don't have a magical price gouging machine. They do run out, however, but they also do get them back in stock. If what we've seen the past two years continues, there's no hurry as the "sale" price will keep coming back.
Have a MC down the street from work. Guess I know what I will be doing on the 9th Just need to find some hot memory deals and research a P67 motherboard.
Yeah, I'm considering... I'm at least an hour from the nearest though...
Look around for memory. I think Micro Center was advertising some Patriot 4GB kit for $30 after rebate. Any DDR3 dual channel kit will do, though I personally prefer kits rated no higher than 1.5v.
Tempting to upgrade old e8400 system with 2500K but what motherboard is decent ?
Well, that's the catch. There's a paucity of reviews right now. I think the "safe" bet would be to go with brands that have worked before.
Yes, good price on SB from MC. Even if you add tax, it is still lower than 1K tray price. MC must be selling them at a loss.
They are a retail store so they do participate in "loss leaders" to get people in the store. Yes, the tactic works, because if I go there I will likely buy a motherboard to go with it. Notice that these super special deals are B&M only, even though they do sell on their web site.
The other thing is that they probably aren't losing as much as we think they are losing (if anything at all). The first thing is that the quoted wholesale pricing is unit/1000. Micro Center may have bigger buying power than 1000 pieces at a time. They don't just sell the CPUs, but use them in their own line of systems (Powerspec). Also, Intel gives channel rebates based on volume. Kind of like car dealers showing you their invoice cost and saying "I'm only making $100 off you" but in reality they get rebates from the manufacturer at a later time depending on volume.
I suspect I'll be keeping those s775 quadcores in my servers for a long time.
You can always sell off your old stuff to offset the new. I'd imagine the 12MB cache Core 2 Quads have retained a lot of their resale value in the used market.
I currently have an e8400 @ 3.6 (can probably do 4 w/e0 stepping)
Was debating getting a q9300 + OC or just going to the new SB.
I mostly game, any suggestions?
Yes. :thumbsup:
By that, I mean do the upgrade. An overclocked 2500K should walk all over an overclocked Q9300. Read the Anandtech article for game benchmarks.
xfire is optional but i can live without it. I'm not even sure which chipset supports SB. I thought they changed the pin out again. The 2500K base speed should be about 1.5x linear speed up on the e8400 base speed; right ? (of course it has more cores than the e8400 for those games which are multi-core).
The socket is LGA 1155 (not the incumbent 115
6). The launch chipsets are P67 (no IGP support, supports dual PCIe graphics) or H67 (single PCIe graphics and IGP support).