August 9th, 2006

Core 2 Duo - Pricing and availability

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 2:29 am

Categories: New-Tech, Thoughts

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With almost any product, the success comes down to two things; pricing and availability.  It seems that Intel may have stumbled on both of these with the launch of the Core 2 Duo range of CPUs.

Intel’s latest range of CPUs, the Core 2 Due (codenamed Conroe) has had plenty of exposure over the last few months, and this exposure has translated into a demand.  Problem is, while these CPUs were launched on July 27^th, availability is still patchy.  For example, Newegg are showing that the E6300 and E6400 are available immediately (although they are limited to one per customer), but the E6600, E6700 and X6800 are nowhere to be seen.  This is a real disappointment because it was the E6600 and E6700 that showed the most potential when it comes to overclocking.  While the E6300 and E6400 are powerful, the real powerhouses aren’t available.

Another sticking point is price.  Newegg shows the E6300 and E6400 priced at $249 and $299 respectively.  This is well above the distributor price of $183 and $224.  With such a large increase in price, it’s worthwhile going back and reviewing any purchase plans and factor in this new data.

On top of all this, Dell customers waiting for their Core 2 Duo powered XPS 700 rigs aren’t going to see anything until at least October 17^th, and there are some reports that they might even have to wait until February 2007 because it seems that Dell are going for the Nvidia Nforce 590 chipset (Update - Dell has some news about the XPS 700 on their blog.  Here they are saying that it’s a problem with the cooling assembly that’s causing the delays, which is a valid reason indeed to hold back on shipping the systems).

There’s many a slip between the cup and the lip.  It seems like Intel has slipped.