Over the past few years we have seen several new products fizzle despite their industry-leading performance numbers. While pricing tends to be the primary reason for these disappointments, other factors like reputation and public exposure can also cause lackluster sales figures. However, and especially in today’s economy, products are more likely to suffer in the market due to high prices. This would appear to be the case with Intel’s flagship Core i7 product family.
Interestingly though, Intel’s Core i7 processors are not particularly expensive themselves, especially considering the performance margins you stand to gain by purchasing one. The Core i7-920 will handily beat the hell out of anything in its price range, while the i7-940 and i7-965EE admittedly represent a far inferior value. The problem seems to lie in the cost of the platform that is needed to purchase the new processor. Intel’s X58 chipset, while impressive, maintains a very high price point after 4 months on the market - both MSI and Gigabyte have excellent entry-level offerings listed for $199. A further costly aspect of the platform is its use of DDR3 memory. The price of DDR3, though decreasing rapidly, has always been significantly more than DDR2. The performance advantage on paper might be quite evident, but many reviewers have commented on the insignificant practical (in-game results) advantages of the greater bandwidth.
Expensive memory, expensive motherboards, and reasonably priced processors add up to a costly solution. Competing platforms like those based on AMD’s Phenom II X4 and even Intel’s own Core 2 Quad series represent a far more compelling choice for performance in today’s economy.
Intel, however, is probably not too concerned with the slow sales; their Kentsfield-based Core 2 parts continue to be the best selling quad-core processors. The launch of more affordable platforms for the mainstream Core i7 processors in Q4 2009 should drive sales up significantly as well.
Source: Fudzilla
Popularity: 16% [?]
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