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Indeed. Same position as you. My computer is almost 2 years old with a Q6600 and I see no reason to upgrade anything other than maybe my video card at this point.

Good for you.

Me too because it's what I have already and it's doing well. Still, in a year or so when I build a new rig it will be getting an i5 or i7. I try to only build every few years so I can take advantage of new architectures as they come out and avoid wasting money on smaller upgrades. My main machine is used for gaming, a/v editing, media center, and general use so the greater processing power will be welcome. I just don't need the upgrade badly enough right now to justify a new motherboard, CPU, and likely RAM since my current setup is adequate for now.

The Q9650 is $319 on Newegg, and the Q9550 (same proc at 2.83 instead of 3 GHz) is $219. Quite a saving if you don't mind the drop of 166 MHz. You can save 33% of the price of the chip for a change you wouldn't even notice.

I use alot of CPU so every little bit helps currentyly when using media encoding my Dual core 3ghz sits at 100%

Q9670 o.0 that doesnt exist

i guess you meant Q9650

lol

you never heard of Core i5 7xx ,Core i7 8xx it is mainstream parts

Core i7 9xx is for tech enthusiast and the like

It will be soon, the Core2 brand is being retired/phased out and replaced with the i5 and i7 8xx parts.

the remaining core 2 part ,would become Core i3 btw

Of course I've heard of CoreiX, I just don't know anyone that has one.

And where are you located?

I have made three trips to MicroCenter (Rockville twice, and Fairfax once) just since the i7 920 launched, and the bottom of the i7 line (at the time) was selling strongly; just not as strongly as Core 2 and its derivatives (from the Q9xxx down to E1200). However, the Core 2 and derivatives have been out for two years (the first i7 hasn't had it's one-year birthday yet).

E1200? The Celeron and Pentium Dual Core sublines (starting with the infamous E1200) are all based on the Core 2 architecture; the biggest differences between the various Core2 CPUs are in three areas - number of cores, on-die cache, and lack/presence of VT-x support.

Single-core x86 CPUs? Unless you want a netbook, you can forget it (the bottom-end Celeron today, the E1500, is a Celeron Dual Core; AMD retired their single-core CPUs last year). Quad-core basically went mainstream with the Q6600 (Kentsfield), and that was back in 2007! I can buy Q9550 *today* for the same price (and at the same store) that was selling Q6600 CPUs last year (MicroCenter in Rockville, MD - http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_...uct_id=0299412).

However, it still takes time for multicore-aware applications to be developed, despite the low prices for quad-core CPUs today. Because of that lag, quad-core is in a conundrum as far as upgrade sales are concerned (new-PC upgrade sales for the past two years have basically been flat, and the only quad-core CPUs Apple has been buying have been XEONs; certainly not welcome news for Intel). Throw in that while operating systems (back to Windows 2000 and XP) readily support multicore today (and Vista, and now 7, supported 64-bit from launch out), multi-core application support (except for niche apps and some games) is rarer than 64-bit application support.

However, I think that 2010 is when multicore applications will finally go mainstream (if for no other reason than that is when Office 2010 64-bit is due to launch).

I'm in the UK. You've made my point though, it might be selling strong, but the Core 2 Quads are still selling stronger, which makes them mainstream. You only need to read this article's comments to see that.

Check the complete review at Anandtech, you will see the Q6600.

Tks!

It will be.

Vista and 7 (in their 64-bit iterations) put both dual-core and quad-core CPUs to more effective use than XP64 (my own Celeron DC E1200 is proof of that). However, the operating system is only part of the story; the applications are the real *meat* of the usefulness (or lack thereof) of multicore hardware. Even the few mainstream 64-bit applications that are out there (or in beta, such as Office 2010) make only sparing use of multi-core (so far, other than PowerPoint, Access, and even Outlook, and in Outlook's case, only seldom, most of even 2010 x64 is still mostly single-core; Word and Publisher make no use of even a second CPU core, let alone two more such as in the Phenom quads and Q6xxx, let alone Q8xxx/9xx.

That's largely why I haven't even purchased a quad-core myself, despite it being both affordable and a drop-in upgrade; most of the time, those two additional cores will be loafing!

That's the point that's being made all over this thread.

I had originally bought my E1200 as a placeholder CPU (the motherboard itself, an M-ATX nForce 7100/630i-chipset based ASUS P5N-EM HDMI, will happily swallow darn near any LGA775 CPU, including all the LGA775 quads). However, despite actually playing more games than I did with my Northwood-C, I can't name so much as one game or applicatioon that I run today that truly begs for a quad-core. (And that includes Office 2010.) It's likely that the only reason I'd have for upgrading to a quad-core will be that I can't upgrade anything else (graphics and hard drives are the only non-CPU upgrades I have left, as I'm maxed out on RAM, and I'm running 7 x64 RTM right now). Optical drives? I have two DVD burners (one PATA and one SATA; the SATA DL burner replaced a PATA DL burner that failed), so I'm set there as well. BD burners are still too expensive for now and LightScribe (or lack thereof) is far from a dealmaker or dealbreaker (and even if it were, I'd more likely replace the still-strong PATA SL burner with a SATA DL LightScribe model for the same price I paid for the non-LightScribe SATA DL burner I have now).

I've been waiting for the quad core prices to fall as well. Now with the Core i5 at $199 we should see some movement or else the fix is in.