RejZoR3770k is 309 EUR here and it's the cheapest importer for my country where i buy most of components. Still soaking up like a cardboard submarine? And if you do this every time for a mere 10% boost... do the math...

I'm placing big hopes for Skylake architecture when it arrives sometime next year (probably) but who knows.

HumanSmokeToo long a walk I'm afraid - I live in New Zealand...although at those prices it does make me acutely aware of the cost of living at the last stop before Antarctica.

At $230, RejZor's argument is taking on more water than a cardboard submarine.

RejZoRDigged the order mail from June 2009. Core i7 920 D0 that i bought was 262 EUR at that time (same store). And i know i paid tiny bit extra just to get the D0 version specifically. It'll soon be exactly 4 years ago when i bought it and i still think it's superb. Paired it with Antec H2O 920 cooler and overclocked it and it's up to every gaming task that i have and all the compression/encoding needs. 8 threads at 4+ GHz is not that weak despite the CPU age.

Granted, no one forces me to shell out such amount of money, but with such tiny boosts it makes even less sense. I was looking at Q6600 back then and then decided to shell out some more and take the newer Core i7 920. And i made a great decision. I don't think any of the current CPU's would last as long as this one did.

RejZoRIf Intel will keep on doing these idiotic 10% bumps for every series at full price every time, they can have them. Lazy money milking bastards.

NeoXFHere's hoping AMD has a 5 or 6 module Steamroller up the pipe for us by the end of the year, that should make short work of this... hopefully for less than half the price. Otherwise there are no upsides to these almost pathetic speed-bumps...

LAN_deRf_HAAre these soldered? That would be just about the only interesting data point, seeing if a soldered Ivy runs cooler than a soldered Sandy, but beyond that we knew the performance of this chip before it even had a name.

OctaveanI think the reality is that Intel's priorities have changed somewhat.

AMD x86 / x64 chips are no longer much of a threat but ARM processors are selling like mad and the market for ARM based hardware is still growing. Whereas the PC industry is seeing negative growth. Intel knows they need to answer the ARM initiative. A big way of doing that is with decent performance and power efficiency not raw processing power. So this is likely where Intel is focusing their efforts.

Intel should be able to engineer monster performance chips for desktop, workstations, servers and so on while engineering power efficient chips for tablets, phones and so on,.... but that doesn't mean that they wont cut corners by focusing on power efficiency on the platforms that would better benefit from raw power,..

FourstaffIn trays of 1000s, i7 920 sold for USD284 in 2009, which is about €200 with June 2009 exchange rate. You paid €262, which is about 30% markup
In trays of 1000s, 3770K is selling for $332, which is about €255. Shop is selling for €309 for 20% markup.

Performance difference between both is much more than 20% in most cases(with or without overclock), so I would say that you are not getting an inferior product in any way (from 1000s tray prices, to exchange rates, to mark up). Inflation has not been taken to account yet. On top of that, its cheaper to assemble a system with 3770K rather than a 920 system, iirc it costs about $1500 for a fully functioning 920 system (with graphics card etc), while you will need to shell out about $1000 for an equivalent system (equivalent used extremely loosely here).

Have you considered 3570K instead? Much cheaper than 3770k, and performance wise not too far behind. Granted the upgrade from 920 to 3570K is not as significant but that is large due to the strength and performance of the 920 more than anything else.

www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/47?vs=551

midnightoilThere's no possible way for Intel to match ARM though, and they know that. The only way they can even come close is using vastly more expensive, complicated and smaller processes ... but they're still a long way behind in performance per watt and massively behind in performance per $.

There's no way that Intel can make any inroads into the phone, tablet or embedded devices market, and ARM will continue to chew through vast swathes of the server (and soon workstation) market. The rate of market share loss is likely to increase exponentially for Intel once the the 64bit ARM chips start making their way into systems later this year.

It's going to get to the point soon where they either admit complete defeat or they start making more use of their existing ARM licenses (Intel are heavy licensees of ARM IP, contrary to popular belief).

The main reason Intel aren't pushing the envelope in desktop or E Xeons is because whilst they have a reasonable lead over AMD in absolute performance and performance per watt, they need the absolute maximum return possible on the minimum investment. Outside of the SSD business, their margins and marketshares are dropping like a stone everywhere else.

rejzorI don't think any of the current cpu's would last as long as this one did.

HD64GI cannot understand that everyone thinks there is a 10% bump in IPC! It isn't! Max gain is almost 10%. In the majority of the tests the gain is 5-7%. And that is sad since the clocks are the same as IB. Total gain is none to move somone to upgrade. I hope AMD's SR is what expected. Only then Intel is going to bring faster CPUs or lower the prices.

HD64GI cannot understand that everyone thinks there is a 10% bump in IPC! It isn't! Max gain is almost 10%. In the majority of the tests the gain is 5-7%. And that is sad since the clocks are the same as IB. Total gain is none to move somone to upgrade. I hope AMD's SR is what expected. Only then Intel is going to bring faster CPUs or lower the prices.

birdieSeems like I'm the only person who's noticed that the 4960X has a higher base frequency, and supposedly a higher turbo frequency.

Which kinda negates the enthusiasm over the new CPUs since the older ones can be OC'ed.