Hurry Up and Wait

The latest and greatest are going to be and stay expensive for more than a while, unless we’re unlucky.

Bloomfields are supposed to show up mid-November.  Denebs are supposed to show up somewhere around the beginning of next year.  

They will both share something in common; they’ll both be relatively expensive and stay that way for quite some time to come.  A 2.66GHz Bloomfield will probably start with a street price of around $300; a 2.6GHz Deneb will come in at roughly $250.   The Intel prices won’t drop (outside of shortage-induced premium pricing disappearing) for quite a while; AMD’s prices will most likely drop, but probably not by too much. 

If you don’t like the sound of those prices, and you want better than what’s out there today, you’re just going to have to wait.  On the Intel side, that won’t be until sometime past mid-year 2009 with the Lynnfields, for AMD, the first chance to get something relatively cheap will be will be these low-cache Propuses sometime in the second quarter. 

In both cases, while CPU prices will be lower, DDR3 prices will still likely be higher than current (admittedly quite low)DDR2 prices.

So, if we’re lucky, not too many overclockers will be overclocking the latest and greatest for some time to come. 

No, the word “lucky” isn’t a typo.  If we’re unlucky, the prices of these expensive chips will drop far faster than I’ve indicated.  Why is that “unlucky?”  It’s unlucky because the only way the prices on these chips tank is if the world economy really tanks, too. 

And that’s a cure worse than the disease.   

Ed

About Ed Stroligo 95 Articles
Ed Stroligo was one of the founders of Overclockers.com in 1998. He wrote hundreds of editorials analyzing the tech industry and computer hardware. After 10+ years of contributing, Ed retired from writing in 2009.

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