Price bottom for LGA775 Quad's?

A

arthur_tuxedo

Gawd
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Jan 8, 2003
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Hey all,

I was looking at Microcenter's lovely $170 Q9550, and I wondered whether it (or a similar one) would be available later for less. Products on outdated sockets almost always reach a floor price until they get scarce and the old-MB holdouts drive the prices up. Usually this price has been much lower than $170 in the past, though. More like $50-$75.

I am currently satisfied with my proc, although there are a few CPU-intensive games that do run like crap, they're not ones I play a lot and it has more to do with their bad coding than anything else (currently running Core 2 Duo @ 3 GHz). If a ~3 GHz C2Q will be cheaper in 6-12 months, I am more than willing to wait. However, I do not want to pay more later. What do you guys think? Will the price drop lower before it starts to get driven up?
 
That price ceiling is for baseline procs. In your $50-75 range, you'll already find everything ranging from a Celeron e1200 to the "antique" e6400, and you can even find some e7x00's around there now. It's a pretty clear indication that we've hit the price floor. The premium ($125-150 for a Q6600, $170+ for a Q9550) will probably stay constant until inventory dries up, which will happen without the need for any further price cuts.

Sorry, I don't see prices falling any further.

And this thread should have a poll. :)
 
If anything I'd say the price is going up not down. The demand for the chips is still high but they are not producing them anymore.

If you look at places like newegg chips like the Q9550 jumped way up in price, and instead you have the Q9505 (Half the L2 Cache of the Q9550) in it's old price bracket. The price at Microcenter is actually cheaper than almost everywhere else, I'd snap one up quick if you are considering it.

I think that you will continue to see some Core2 chips continue to come down in price but they will be all of the lesser, cut-down chips. You'll see a lot of cheap Q8200's, E7500, Q9505's, etc. The traditional good chips like the E8400-E8600, Q9550-Q9650, etc will likely stay at their semi-inflated prices until they aren't available anymore.

Take the Q6600 for example, it never really declined much in price and now they are essentially unavailable.
 
If you plan on staying with LGA775 for a while, get the 9550.

If not, then get a LGA1156 or 1366 setup.... but wait for RAM prices to become more reasonable first.
 
I don't forsee the 45nm Q9xx0 series chips going more than $5-10 lower than they are right now. I've been surprised at how few I've seen in the FS/FT trade section. Most that I have seen are being sold for $200+ used which is very ridiculous to me since many of us can make a short drive and pick one up for $30 less after tax... and some that aren't could probably ask a friend to pick one up on the way home for work and pay for cost+shipping+tax+a cold brew or something...
 
huddy said:
I don't forsee the 45nm Q9xx0 series chips going more than $5-10 lower than they are right now. I've been surprised at how few I've seen in the FS/FT trade section. Most that I have seen are being sold for $200+ used which is very ridiculous to me since many of us can make a short drive and pick one up for $30 less after tax... and some that aren't could probably ask a friend to pick one up on the way home for work and pay for cost+shipping+tax+a cold brew or something...
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yeah it doesn't help when people actually buy them from those people as well. It looks like prices have started to fall though lately, also quite a few people don't have a microcenter by them.
 
butterfliesrpretty said:
yeah it doesn't help when people actually buy them from those people as well. It looks like prices have started to fall though lately, also quite a few people don't have a microcenter by them.
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yeah I would pick one up if I had a local Micrcenter. by the time I pay for tax and gas to the closest one it will be no cheaper than getting it from Newegg.
 
I went over a few points regarding this in another thread. Intel is doing something different this time around that hasn't been done in a while. Right now, the C2D and C2Q lines are being used as the mainstream chips instead of a cut down or slower version of the newest architecture. The i7 line was released a long time ago and it was only recently that a more mainstream priced version of that architecture was released. As it is, there still isn't anything remotely like a budget version of that architecture released yet.

Intel is capitalizing on the very mature and cheap process of the Core2 lines and using that to provide the mainstream and budget chips in the lineup. Because of this, you will not see the prices on these chips drop much if any at all. Since the i5 line was finally released, you're going to see production of the Core2 line slowly decrease until the lineup of i5 and probably i3 is fully fleshed out. This will keep demand up on the Core2 line which will keep prices up. Once the Core2 line is deprecated, prices are likely to raise since there will be no more production and there will still be demand as replacements and upgrades. The prices on the Core2 line will not really drop until there is no more real demand at which point the Core2 line will not be worth running performance-wise. Right now, you can see this with the P4 line. There is no mainstream demand for the P4s although there are still people who need them as occasional replacements and they are dirt cheap for the most part.

Basically, the price on the Core2 line isn't going to appreciably drop any time soon. The current prices are about as good as they are going to get. You can probably expect the current prices to stay as they are for a while but will likely go higher as the i5 line and eventually the i3 line are filled out.

 
My opinion:
Unless you care about 15%-20% gain on this or that application,
or a smaller percentage gain on DDR3 vs DDR2,
the LGA775 Quads (and duals) are still extremely viable, and
the socket is extremely mature overall.
 
aamsel said:
My opinion:
Unless you care about 15%-20% gain on this or that application,
or a smaller percentage gain on DDR3 vs DDR2,
the LGA775 Quads (and duals) are still extremely viable, and
the socket is extremely mature overall.
Click to expand...

considering that they trade punches with a similarly clocked i5 I'd think they have plenty of life left.
 
i just picked up tne q9550 from microcenter. they had a ton of e0 in stock, and they OC great at very low voltages. as far as bottoming prices are concerned, i wasn't patient enough to wait, plus i checked ebay prices against microcenter's, no idea how they could sell for $170 brand new. too bad they don't ship
 
I think that core2 still has a solid year of high demand and then as the i5 goes down in price and i3 is introduced it will replace the demand for core2

I would love if someone could get me a q9550 from their local microcenter. please pm me with their prices for services and shipment.
 
mike87 said:
i just picked up tne q9550 from microcenter. they had a ton of e0 in stock, and they OC great at very low voltages. as far as bottoming prices are concerned, i wasn't patient enough to wait, plus i checked ebay prices against microcenter's, no idea how they could sell for $170 brand new. too bad they don't ship
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They sell at a loss to get you in the store to buy other things. Also why they don't ship.
 
mike87 said:
...no idea how they (Q9550) could sell for $170 brand new. too bad they don't ship
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Well, keep in mind that the i5 750 sells there for $149 and the i7 920 for $199, so all of their chips are less than Newegg's prices by a good bit, some of them $80 or more less than Newegg.

Since both the i5 750 and the i7 920 are both supposed to well outperform the Q9550, the pricing is within reason (for Microcenter anyhow.)
 
"Well outperform" is a stretch. you're only talking about a 10-15% disadvantage at the same clockspeed. OC your Q9550 to 4Ghz and you still have a heck of a processor.
 
yea, i dont know about "well out perform". especially the 750. q9550 (from mc), ddr2 and p45 boards are prob best bang for buck around right now, tho nearing the eol.
 
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