i3 pricing

edplayer

Platinum Member
Sep 13, 2002
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surprised Bottleneck hasn't post this yet:

i3pricing.jpg



these appear to be retail prices from a German store

copied from fudzilla:


http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/16540/1/
 

CurseTheSky

Diamond Member
Oct 21, 2006
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Doesn't look bad if those specs and prices end up being accurate. That is, as long as the motherboards are REALLY cheap.

Will Clarkdale be LGA 1156 or something new?
 

cbn

Lifer
Mar 27, 2009
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surprised Bottleneck hasn't post this yet:

i3pricing.jpg



these appear to be retail prices from a German store

copied from fudzilla:


http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/16540/1/

Everything I have seen up to this point has the lowest two SKUs having hyperthreading but lacking turbo mode.

Besides Fudzilla has been wrong before. They also claimed HD5750 would have 1120 stream processors http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15838/34/ after some overseas computer store posted "specs" on the internet.
 
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edplayer

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Sep 13, 2002
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yeah, noticed that also

Will find out soon though.

Wonder how close pricing is? The $150 i5 750 (from MC) is the benchmark. Not everyone has one close to them but it always comes up :)
 

classy

Lifer
Oct 12, 1999
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Those prices are not very good when compared to what is available from Intel in I5 and 7 flavors.
 

nyker96

Diamond Member
Apr 19, 2005
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if they don't include HT I don't think the i3s are worth this price. add a little more you already can get a PII-x4.
 

v8envy

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Sep 7, 2002
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Please remember the i3s will have a GPU on board. It may be feeble and useless for gaming, but it will enable a cheaper overall platform. If it can play back 1080p and surf the net it's all that current IGP customers need and then some.
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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Sep 28, 2005
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im assuming the 661 is suposed to be the gamers edition with the higher igp clock?
 

cbn

Lifer
Mar 27, 2009
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Wonder how close pricing is? The $150 i5 750 (from MC) is the benchmark. Not everyone has one close to them but it always comes up :)

Since you are mentioning street pricing....

I can buy a Core i5/mobo combo deal from Fry's for $199-$229.

If the same trend holds true the Core i3 and mobo combo will go for $129-$149.

But here is where things get really interesting:

If I want to overclock the Core i5 750 to 4 Ghz I need at least another 100 watts on my PSU and a Tower cooler to make it quiet. This drives up the price probably another $40-$80. ($30 to $60 for the tower cooler and another $10-20 for a PSU that is 100-150 watts stronger depending on the level of the PSU)

If I overclock a Core i3 to 4 Ghz I'm sure a stock Core i5 750 cooler will be sufficient for the same level of quietness as long as the IGP isn't running at the same time.

On top of that i3 with hyperthreading probably will cover most of the games out now till Bulldozer arrives since none of them have been optimized yet. (GTA IV only scales 30% with quad core)

So the total difference in price for Core i5 750 vs Core i3 (when both are overclocked) ends up being much larger than the MSRP difference suggests. Not only that but the Core i5 750 at 4 Ghz is going to put a lot more heat into my case (reducing component life) as well as drive up my energy bills more.

Too bad Intel decided not give Consumers the choice of 32nm Core i5 750 because that would have negated a lot of what I am saying. Maybe Bulldozer will force them to make more competitive products in the midrange instead of putting most of their eggs in the low end basket like they are doing with Core i3.
 
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21stHermit

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Dec 16, 2003
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Here's a chart from July, it shows all the Core i3's as having hyperthreading, only the Pentium flavor does not.

21jul09_intelupcoming2.jpg
 

jvroig

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Nov 4, 2009
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Maybe Bulldozer will force them to make more competitive products in the midrange instead of putting most of their eggs in the low end basket like they are doing with Core i3.
To be more competitive in the mid-range, all Intel has to do right now, without even waiting for new architectures or die-shrinks to be released, is to slash prices on all Core 2 chips they are still shipping.

They don't need to make competitive products, because that implies that AMD has them beat product-wise. That's only true in so far as Intel seems to be uninterested in cutting prices to meet AMD, so AMD gets a lot of "price/performance" love. Imagine if they slashed 10-15% from their Core2Quads. AMD's gonna get a lot less love then.
 

cbn

Lifer
Mar 27, 2009
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To be more competitive in the mid-range, all Intel has to do right now, without even waiting for new architectures or die-shrinks to be released, is to slash prices on all Core 2 chips they are still shipping.

They don't need to make competitive products, because that implies that AMD has them beat product-wise. That's only true in so far as Intel seems to be uninterested in cutting prices to meet AMD, so AMD gets a lot of "price/performance" love. Imagine if they slashed 10-15% from their Core2Quads. AMD's gonna get a lot less love then.

They way Intel has been hyping Core i3 makes me think it probably is a really good chip otherwise they would have used that same Fab space to make 32nm Core i5 750s instead.

Dual core with hyperthreading vs 30% scaling with quad core in GTA IV. How far will these really be apart? For how much total money?
 

21stHermit

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Dec 16, 2003
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Maybe Bulldozer will force them to make more competitive products in the midrange instead of putting most of their eggs in the low end basket like they are doing with Core i3.
But Bulldozer is vaporware, it won't be shipping for a year IF AMD can keep on schedule. Last I read, Intel has 4 Fabs coming online producing 32nm wafers. Does AMD/Global Foundries have any production 32nm fabs?

To my way of thinking is the whole point of Clarkdale is high volume in the "meat & potatoes" market segment. While AMD talks Fusion, Clarkdale will have shipped a 100-million CPU/IGP's by the end of 2010. That says huge PROFIT. Less than 1% of those customers will give a rats a$$ about OCing.

This is the Q8400 repeating itself, while AMD was talking Quad on a die, Intel was shipping 2-die Quads. Shipping tens of millions!

Most of your post was spot on, pointing out the real cost and energy efficiency. Being green is going to be a huge market driver in the next decade.
 

cbn

Lifer
Mar 27, 2009
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Does AMD/Global Foundries have any production 32nm fabs?

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=858

"Also planned are some 32nm graphics cards for the first quarter of 2010, as AMD start using this new manufacturing process with their low-end products, as they often do. The Radeon HD 5670 (Redwood XT), Radeon HD 5650 (Redwood PRO) and Radeon HD 5550 (Cedar XT) are all 32nm budget parts that should run extremely cool and consume very little power."
 
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21stHermit

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Dec 16, 2003
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http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=858

"Also planned are some 32nm graphics cards for the first quarter of 2010, as AMD start using this new manufacturing process with their low-end products, as they often do. The Radeon HD 5670 (Redwood XT), Radeon HD 5650 (Redwood PRO) and Radeon HD 5550 (Cedar XT) are all 32nm budget parts that should run extremely cool and consume very little power."
Not so fast, ATI has always been fabless. Do we know than those 32nm chips are coming from GF and not TSCM? A shipping 32nm CPU would convince me.
 

cbn

Lifer
Mar 27, 2009
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21stHermit

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Dec 16, 2003
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Very impressive, wonder what MB they used? None of the current S1156 MB's will work because of the SB chipset is unique to Clarkdale, no NB needed. Also the undervolt (0.832V) requires a high end MB with voltage control in BIOS, I read that mini-ITX boards do not have the real estate for that circuitry.

31a.png
 

edplayer

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Sep 13, 2002
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It was at that price once with very limited availability. Lots of reports of stores out of stock by noon on the first day.

Big difference from the everyday $150 price at Microcenter. Not everyone has one near them but if they do, they don't have to wait once a year for that price...


I suppose they could have great pricing on the i3 also.

and as far as your other costs being much higher for the i5, we discussed it already. If you want to buy a crap psu that barely can manage an i3 setup, yes, your theory might be right.

As for the cooling, that has yet to be seen, but does make more sense. Have you seen any testing done on the retail cooler (has it even been decided yet?) which would confirm it being capable of running an i3 at 4GHz at the same noise level of a $40~80 aftermarket cooler for the i5 (at 4GHz)?
 
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Lonyo

Lifer
Aug 10, 2002
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Not so fast, ATI has always been fabless. Do we know than those 32nm chips are coming from GF and not TSCM? A shipping 32nm CPU would convince me.

Haha TSMC doing 32nm in Q1 2010.
Ignoring the fact that rumours are that TSMC might be skipping 32 and going to 28, they don't even have 40nm working well.

These prices seem a bit bad in some ways compared to the Athlon II X4's, but then the clock speeds are a bit higher. Interesting to see how a slight clockspeed advantage (assuming no turbo on at least some of the models) and hyperthreading with 2 real cores will fight against 4 real cores.
Of course Intel will be making more money with having these at 32nm.

I think we can pretty much ignore the on die GPU given the price of AM2/3 motherboards with integrated graphics probably won't be too far off the price of an i3 mobo and probably give better performance.