Quad core. I stopped reading at that point. Can we please kill quad cores already as mainstream and make them the low end part already? The hyperthreaded dual core Core i3's are an insult.
I have yet to find a mainstream person that wasn't happy and couldn't do everything they needed with an i3.
For a very short period - they then introduced the Phenom with a maximum price of $ 235 (Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition), whereas Intel continued churning out $ 999 CPUs while being beaten.
The Extreme Edition parts are always overpriced, even compared to their own counterparts. This applied to AMD as well. However, AMD released locked, non-Extreme parts at nearly $1000. The Athlon x2 line game out in May 2005. They released the 4200+, the 4400+ and the 4800+. The 4800+ was $1000, the 4600+ was $600, and the 4200+ was $540. And the next month, AMD released the single core FX-57 for a staggering $1050! Yes, the PD 840EE was overpriced at $1000. But back then, people were used to being ripped off for an unlocked multiplier, that's why the FX-57 could be sold for more than the 4800+, despite being a weaker processor. It could be argued the FX-57 was just as much of a rip-off as the PD 840EE(or possible worse than the PD 840EE being the FX-57 was still a single core). And while the Pentium D line didn't perform as well as the Athlon 64 x2, they weren't that far behind, and there were some good values there. The Pentium D 820, which came out the same time as the Athlon X2s, was actually $250. That's less than half the price of the cheapest dual-core from AMD at the time. It didn't perform as well as the 4200+, but it wasn't half the performance either, maybe closer to 75%. Then there was the Pentium D 805, which came out shortly after the Athlon X2s, and it was priced at only $145! It was a tremendous value, and thanks to the low FSB and high multiplier, it ended up being a great overclocking value too.
So, if you exclude the Extreme Edition processors, the Pentium D line wasn't really overpriced compared to AMD's offerings. I don't really understand where people are saying that Intel was massively overpriced, or stuck to their price points, when the X2s were beating them. Yes, if you just look at the few EE processors, that can be true, but if you look at the whole line of processors, that really isn't.
Oh, and then when they Core 2 Duo line was finally released, Intel didn't exactly jack up their prices. Even though the E6600 easily beat the AM2 X2 4800+(which AMD has just released a month before at $670), Intel priced the E6600 at $320 at launch. Hell, Intel only charged $530 for the E6700 at lauch, even though the E6700 handed the 4800+ its ass on a silver platter with all the trimmings.
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