Wolfdales in the wild!

[Mehen]

well sort of...

@ncix in CAD

E8200 2.66 $205 - ETA February April
E8400 3.00 $230 after $15 MIR - In Stock! (Limited Quantity, get em quick)
E8500 3.16 $320 - ETA February April

These are all dual core, 6mb cache, 1333fsb, 45nm.

[Mehen]

E8400 for $220 CAD - NO REBATE!!!!

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=27784&vpn=BX80570E8400&manufacture=Intel&promoid=1088

Q6600 (2.4 Quadcore) is currently at $270.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=22211&vpn=BX80562Q6600&manufacture=Intel&promoid=1088

[Jammrock]

My friend bought one yesterday, 3 GHz flavor, for his new rig. $220 USD at NewEgg.com.

[Mehen]

Considering right now not many games make use of 4-cores, and the ones that do end up being GPU limited anyways, that is almost the best gaming CPU out there - and it's DIRT CHEAP!!!

If you're the type that upgrade every two years anyways, the 3ghz Wolfdale is an EXCELLENT choice. Can't remember overclocking numbers off hand, but I'm sure it can hit 4ghz on air quite easily.

[Jammrock]

The wolfdale is the first cpu with half steps for overclocking. You just have to pick your board right.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115037

This is what my buddy got. A lot of people post their oc results in their newegg reviews. So far only stellar reviews and OC results. People have gone as high at 4 GHz on the STOCK fan and stock voltages. Rumors are up to 4.8 GHz for high end air.

[Mehen]

Man, depending on what the Q9450 and Q9550 can do, I might end up going dual core instead! Most games end up being GPU limited anyways though... hrmmm

[ND66]

Man, depending on what the Q9450 and Q9550 can do....

Not the best for overclocking as they say here:

7% clock for clock but the "mainstream" multiplier is 8x (Q9450). The wall is around 450-500ish, which means the max would be 3600-4000 MHz. Q6600s can hit the lower number on air and further on water with the 9x multiplier. The Q9450 and even 9550 (8.5x) will be FSB Wall limited rather than thermals in a good OCing system... Then again with more mature X38s and X48s perhaps we will see better FSB numbers. That remains to be seen.

This is what killed Penryn for me. I'd almost wait for Q6700s to drop in price, get a Q6600, or wait on QX9650s to drop in price. The move to 1333 MHz FSB killed my hopes.

The biggest gain is for those doing Video editing.

Aside from the die-shrink, the biggest change Penryn introduces is Intel's new SSE4 instruction set, which can speed up applications written to work with it. For example, Adobe is updating the next version of its Premiere Pro video editing application with SSE4 support.

"Penryn, Phenom PCs: Fast, Not Phenomenal"


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[Mehen]

The gigabyte X48 will hit ~480fsb without changing the voltate, and 500 or just under with a slight bump. So that's 3.84 to 4GHz which is plenty. Same goes for the ASUS X48 board.

With the 8.5 multiplier that is up to 4.25GHz! Well beyond what I would want to try on air with a Q6600 or 6700.

Into the mid 3's though, even a SLI 8800GTX setup is GPU limited. So then it turns more into an issue of heat and power consumption.