Intel's Core iX policy

Now that Intel has released its full range of Core i processors it is interesting to see how and where system vendors are positioning them. For example DELL offers the consumer oriented Inspiron 580, the small business Vostro 430 and the gamer oriented XPS 8100 boxes. All are over £400 in price, leaving the lower ground to the Pentium, Core 2 Duo and Quad CPUs. These are seriously over performed and under priced by the new AMD Athlon II and Phenom II processors which DELL also sell in Inspiron 570 boxes.

So typically there is a £100 premium for buying a Core iX-based system. Granted you do get slightly better performance and a motherboard that should last as long as the venerable Socket 775 ones have. I can only think that once the older Intel CPUs, have gone from stock and the manufacturing has switched over fully to Core iX then the prices will drop considerably. But it seems difficult to recommend buying one at the present time unless you really want the latest technology and are willing to pay for it.