First review of "Gulftown" Intel Core i9 appears

Thrax

First review of "Gulftown" Intel Core i9 appears

Cliff_Forster

Even the resident AMD fanboy will admit that this is clearly an impressive piece of processor fab.

What I have to wonder is this? I don't have the most recent data but last quarter estimates had it that the i7 had not even penetrated 1% of the current desktop processor market. Of the i7's being sold, a vast majority are the 920. Now, the only reason you can surmise for a fantastic piece of tech like this that generates a massive amount of buzz, but does not translate into sales success is price. Add global economic turmoil to the mix, and you know the price is out of line with what people are willing to pay for performance today.

So, what will the i9 accomplish for Intel and its shareholders? It will generate buzz, look great on stat sheets and synthetic benchmarks, but if it does not sell, (and it won't in early 2010 unless they perform a miracle on price), what is the point??

MAGIC

It will sell because everyone wants the biggest e-penis, so they will buy it to have the fastest proc on the market.

Leonardo

I don't have the most recent data but last quarter estimates had it that the i7 had not even penetrated 1% of the current desktop processor market.

That stands to reason. The great majority of desktop consumers buy a major brand, ready-made model. The price trend, especially when adjusted for inflation, is ever downward. The low prices are enabled through extreme mass production and use of less expensive, not-so-high performance parts. And look who is purchasing high performance parts - the gamers. But I believe a PC gamer who builds his own is much more likely to upgrade with a powerful video card rather than the latest CPU. No?

Snarkasm

If market complacency stopped companies from making cool new things, we'd all still be using 8-tracks and taking trains. What if they just made it because they could, and wanted to prove it?

Frost

To Cliff_Forster up top; I agree with what you have to say, very intelligent opinion. But I think it (32 nm series) will sell, remember that when they go to a lower nm size, they can print more processors on a wafer, and thus make each CPU cheaper. So if you are paying $278.99 for a quad-core i7-920, that comes to $69.75 per core. Lets say the new i9-"980" is $278.99 for a six-core, you are really savings $139.50 by buying the six-core. Agree, still more than the Phenom X4 965, which is $49 per core, but personally, I will pay the extra $20.75 per core to get that big performance jump between Intel and AMD. (In my personal opinion, if AMD adjusts the Deneb 965 so it can be used in a dual-processor system, for enthusiast market, then they may have a huge price/performance winner.) Just my thoughts.

Gothiclad

Tech cycles dictate that prices fall by 50% with every round of refresh (like Tesla roadster vs Model S) right?

Thrax

Because the Core i9 is what's called a "halo part," or a product with low sales volume and a high MSRP that caters to a niche market, it will not substantially alter--if at all--the prices of the Core i7s.

Kardon

The 920 sells like a champ because they oc so well. Only total newbs or the most hard core are going to drop $1000 on a higher cpu when you can get identical performance out of the 920.

Now there's no magic trick to add 2 more cores though. So this should sell much better than the 975 extreme