q6600 for $180 at Fry's, buy or wait until end of summer?

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bobjoe275

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My local Fry's Electronics has the q6600 for $180 right now. I'm planning on building my new system at the tail of this coming summer. I was thinking, should I wait and buy later? Like will Intel drop the prices of the q6600? I have never seen such a price drop on the q6600 until recently so I wanna hear your thoughts! :)
 
Looks like a good price, if you need it for your build right now might as well get it.
 
There is a scheduled price drop of the Q6600 & Q6700 (and other CPUs) on April 20. The Q6600 retail price will drop to $224. Are we likely to see anything below the $180 mark? There will be absolutely now way to tell. 180 for the Q6600 is a very good price. I don't believe you'll find that price online anywhere. If you do, then you'll want to see which is cheaper tax on the $180 or the shipping.



 
At the end of summer?
Like, August?! I think you could find sub-$180 on a Q6600 by then.
 
i got mine at frys for 189... i thought it was a good deal. i probably would have gotten an e8400 though if i had to do it again, because im using it for a media center pc and have no real active cooling on it.
 
If ppl start waiting for cheap Q6600s till summer, then ppl will say, "Wait for Nehalem, it's just months away!" Might as well just jump now.
 
Hell ya, I'd jump on that right away if you're in the market for a quad. The 9450's seem to be blowing ass from all the results so far. They don't use much voltage but seem to have a sweet spot of 3.6Ghz just like the 6600, and the temps seem to all be at or near 60c too. LOL, I think 45nm may have just been a marketing joke of some kind, and the cost is getting close to double!!

Yep, definitely get the 6600 if you need a quad now.
 
baleedit said:
Hell ya, I'd jump on that right away if you're in the market for a quad. The 9450's seem to be blowing ass from all the results so far. They don't use much voltage but seem to have a sweet spot of 3.6Ghz just like the 6600, and the temps seem to all be at or near 60c too. LOL, I think 45nm may have just been a marketing joke of some kind, and the cost is getting close to double!!

Yep, definitely get the 6600 if you need a quad now.
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The problem seems to be those rather odd multipliers the Yorkies are using, along with the 1333 FSB. While the CPU itself may have plenty of room more to run, the motherboard itself hits an FSB wall at 3.6 GHz (this has proven out with not just the Q9450, but even the Q9300, the Q6600's likely replacement as bottom-end quad).

Further muddying the waters is the utter lack of CPU bottlenecking in anything above 3 GHz; unless you're doing the PC equivalent of racing for pinks, there's no real game or application-driven reason to overclock beyond that point (which a SLACR Q6600 reaches with ease, even with the stock cooling).

Lastly, thanks to first extremely slow sales of E6600 (which freed up many more Conroe CPU dies for packaging into Q6600s) and slow sales of Q6600 itself (due to the persistence of the Clock Speed Myth), we now have the equivalent of a Kentsfield Fire Sale, where a soon-to-be-EOLd CPU is at bargain pricing (a side-effect of the persistence of the Clock Speed Myth is that Q6600 is now priced *under* E8400 by as much as $50). Adding further confusion is the appearance of the first OEM versions of Wolfdale's quad-core Yorkfield bigger brother (Q9300 and Q9450), neither of which has shown to have the overclocking headroom of the Kentsfields they are planned to replace (Q6600 and Q6700); however, they are actually available, while E8200 and E8400 (the Wolfdale smaller brothers) are hit-or-miss (mostly miss) in terms of availability.

The real debate is no longer Wolfdale vs. Yorkfield, but more Wolfdale vs. Kentsfield (because of the combination of spotty Wolfdale availability and Kentsfield's fire-sale pricing) further muddied by increasing availability of applications, games, and even operating system usage of multicore CPUs, and the appearance in the wings of Yorkfield, albeit Yorkfield hobbled by an apparent FSB wall.
 
PGHammer said:
The problem seems to be those rather odd multipliers the Yorkies are using, along with the 1333 FSB. While the CPU itself may have plenty of room more to run, the motherboard itself hits an FSB wall at 3.6 GHz (this has proven out with not just the Q9450, but even the Q9300, the Q6600's likely replacement as bottom-end quad).

Further muddying the waters is the utter lack of CPU bottlenecking in anything above 3 GHz; unless you're doing the PC equivalent of racing for pinks, there's no real game or application-driven reason to overclock beyond that point (which a SLACR Q6600 reaches with ease, even with the stock cooling).

Lastly, thanks to first extremely slow sales of E6600 (which freed up many more Conroe CPU dies for packaging into Q6600s) and slow sales of Q6600 itself (due to the persistence of the Clock Speed Myth), we now have the equivalent of a Kentsfield Fire Sale, where a soon-to-be-EOLd CPU is at bargain pricing (a side-effect of the persistence of the Clock Speed Myth is that Q6600 is now priced *under* E8400 by as much as $50). Adding further confusion is the appearance of the first OEM versions of Wolfdale's quad-core Yorkfield bigger brother (Q9300 and Q9450), neither of which has shown to have the overclocking headroom of the Kentsfields they are planned to replace (Q6600 and Q6700); however, they are actually available, while E8200 and E8400 (the Wolfdale smaller brothers) are hit-or-miss (mostly miss) in terms of availability.

The real debate is no longer Wolfdale vs. Yorkfield, but more Wolfdale vs. Kentsfield (because of the combination of spotty Wolfdale availability and Kentsfield's fire-sale pricing) further muddied by increasing availability of applications, games, and even operating system usage of multicore CPUs, and the appearance in the wings of Yorkfield, albeit Yorkfield hobbled by an apparent FSB wall.
Click to expand...


I thought the real debate now was Yorkfield vs. Kentsfield, since Wolfdales are hardly available anywhere. So the question is do you want a proven Kentsfield chip which everyone knows what they're capable of.... for cheap.... or do you want to get a Yorkfield which definitely consumes less power, but some are hitting FSB walls supposedly.
 
chrisf6969 said:
I thought the real debate now was Yorkfield vs. Kentsfield, since Wolfdales are hardly available anywhere. So the question is do you want a proven Kentsfield chip which everyone knows what they're capable of.... for cheap.... or do you want to get a Yorkfield which definitely consumes less power, but some are hitting FSB walls supposedly.
Click to expand...

Some folks are *still* trying to push Wolfdale, despite known spotty availability (and Q6600's killer pricing). Unless it's all about the e-penis, it's Q6600 FTW, overclocked or not, as the current pricing is simply too low to pass up.
 
sorry but that sse4 makes 45nm so much more tempting over a q6600. At least if you're into encoding anyways. Just thought I'd throw that out there.
 
PGHammer said:
Some folks are *still* trying to push Wolfdale, despite known spotty availability (and Q6600's killer pricing). Unless it's all about the e-penis, it's Q6600 FTW, overclocked or not, as the current pricing is simply too low to pass up.
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I'm one that chose the Q6600 over the Q9450. I figured that for the maybe 15% bump, it was not worth the extra $150. I mean, $200 Quads? AND I have apps that can use them! (FSX eats the quad).
 
DemonDiablo said:
sorry but that sse4 makes 45nm so much more tempting over a q6600. At least if you're into encoding anyways. Just thought I'd throw that out there.
Click to expand...

Then if that's the case, consider *Yorkfield*, not Wolfdale, but for reasons of availability (also, the spread between Wolfdale and Yorkfield is not that much), as Yorkfield (especially OEM) is much easier to actually get.
 
I picked up a Q6600 at Mirocenter today for $216 after tax. Its an SLACR but a very recent batch so I dont know how well it will OC. My friend got one there also about a month ago and his was an older batch SLACR that topped out @ 3.2ghz. For the price these are hard to beat.
 
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