Just wait till the end of the year, you will see prices drop sharply......Until then don't hold your breath.....
Intel's X chipset has never been cheap here(Whatever it is X38, X48, X58), donno about the US. For the DDR3 part, it will go cheap pretty soon now that most platform are using it...We can see alot of GFX card with DDR3 these days...More modules sold, cheaper it will be. i7 is Intel's flagship, now that we know things about the i5 and maybe a crappy version like Celeron, i don't think the price will drop that much, maybe when they gonna swith to a smaller process......And this is as long as AMD can stay alive!
DDR3 seem to reasonable at the moment. I remember dropping $200+ for like 2GB of DDR1. DDR2 prices were never meant to fall as low as they are. GSkill, Corsair, Mushkin, OCZ, Patriot all have 6GB DDR3 kits for under $200. Not bad at all.
I don't see what the point of upgrading to the latest and greatest is unless you're upgrading from a pentium 3 and 512mb of ram! Seriously, most people on here have pretty fly systems.. dual cores at 3ghz plus. Unless you're going to be benching like there is no tomorrow and you only care about numbers, is there even a point to getting ddr3 I7 and a x58 mobo? At least, is there any point spending the extra $? I would have to say no.. but that's just me.
If you wanna get the most out of your SLI or TRI-SLI system, yes the i7 should be your premium choice....Other than that if your running a single card and you don't expect to go further (GPU speaking) in the future than a C2D(Q) is just fine.
You can always find deals. Always do 'pricematch'. I usually get really good deals at NCIX. http://www.shopbot.ca/pp-intel-core-i7-920-intel-price-133147.html BTW: when the i7 920 was first available, it was $300 in the US and $400 in Canada. This discreprancy in price happens all the time and it's real BS!
They're still expensive. In fact prices have gone up slightly even on X38 boards. Sustained demand and lack of competition are likely the cause.
Actually I think prices are quite reasonable at the moment. Intel Boxed Core i7 Processor 920 - $229.99 ASUS P6T LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail - $219.99 Free S&H Use Promo Code EMCLNLP44 CORSAIR 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Dual Channel Kit $60.00 - $35.00 after $25.00 Mail-In Rebate Free Shipping CORSAIR 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Dual Channel Kit $50.00 - $25.00 after $25.00 Mail-In Rebate Free Shipping Part of the problem in perception is that some people refuse to consider that one could spend even more on an Intel Core 2 based system then on some Core i7 configuration. In fact, if CPU prowess is an issue one would likely have to choose an Intel Core 2 Quad QX9770 or QX9650 (both of which are ~$1000USD or more) to approximate the performance of the entry level Core i7 920 in many cases. Games don’t need that kind of processing power though, at lest not yet. Another problem in perception is the idea that everyone and their grandma needs to have 8GB of RAM. Typically speaking games don’t need that kind of RAM either and no there is no need of matched pairs of RAM or even Tri-Channel. DDR2 RAM is cheap. In fact DDR2 RAM is exceptionally cheap. it’s the exception to the rule not the rule itself. Therefore DDR3 RAM isn’t expensive in and of itself its that DDR2 is unorthodoxly cheap.
The point of the i7 is productivity gains for professionals. Much faster in CAD & professional graphics (eg photoshop, Maya and others). Gaming it's only a little faster, nothing like the 40-50% gains in the aforementioned programs. Oh and Intel revises it's prices quarterly unless AMD does something.
I'd have to agree with Octavean. The reason most people think that DDR3 memory is so expensive is due to the fact we have been spoiled with dirt cheap DDR2 RAM. To counter that however, it is possible to build a C2Q system for the exact same price and even more expensive than an entry level i7 system, but the performance won't be there. We've seen through many reviews that the i7 920, meant to be an entry level chip, beats out the "Extreme" QX9775 in many scenarios. Now hold on and look at that for a second. The supposed high end, enthusiast processor that costs $1500 is now being beat out by an entry level processor that costs $250? So really if you think about it, you're getting the performance of an extremely high end processor for 1/6 of the price. Heck the whole i7 entry level setup doesn't even cost as much as that processor alone. With that extra $700-$800 you'll be saving you can a pretty amazing video card, or even two. So no, I don't think the i7 setup is overpriced. To make an entry level rig that is comparable to the enthusiast rig of the C2Q series, it is a very affordable price.
I think prices are artificially inflated at the moment! This is new tech and they are bound to hold prices up whilst initial demand is high. I'm certainly not paying £700-£800 for mobo, ram and CPU.
Well you aren't paying that much if you sell your old stuff. Though I usually end up upgrading one of my other machines with it. This time thought I sold my 780i MB and Q6600 and the upgrade ended up costing me around $150. How could I pass that up?
You know, I’m one U.S. citizen who is very sorry to here that. However, as detestable as such price gouging may be as I understand it the Canadian government actually takes care of its citizens with respect to universal health care whereas the U.S. Government would leave us bleeding in the streets and have long since thrown us to the wolves that are the private sector of health insurance. My family and I have good health insurance (thank God) but I would trade good expensive health care for good government provided universal health care (FREE right) for more expensive computer hardware (which is bought on an elective bases) any day of the week. I feel your pain man but I think we all get screwed just indifferent ways.