So a Q6600 G0 maybe what you wanted for Christmas, but what about the Intel's new 45m quad core Q9450 and Q9550? "Come back in August", says popular online UK retailer, Scan. Kudos to these guys for calling it straight, but WHOW! Talk about a product delay.
While Intel is not having yield problems, we did find out it is facing fab capacity problems - an eye opener seeing as it has more fabs than any other chip company.
We checked UK retailers for Q9450 stock and only found it available OEM at OCUK for a wallet emptying £293.74. This is significantly more than the typical £260 asking price, such is the consequence of supply and demand.
What about Q9300? This chip has half the cache (even less than the 65nm Q6000 range) and is slightly slower than the Q9450 (2.5GHz versus 2.66GHz), but it also has a faster 1,333MHz FSB compared to the Q6600's 1,066MHz. This does impact on the overclocking though: The Q6600 has a 9.0x multiplier which should allow the chip to clock further than the Q9300's 7.5x.
We checked other UK retailers today and only found quite a few of these available: Ebuyer has the UK best price at £162.95 and 54 in stock, although Scan and Yoyotech aren't far behind at £169.20 and £169.39 respectively.
OCUK has 10+ in stock of the OEM version on offer for £171.54 and Tekheads has three in stock for £176. Remember you can also keep updated on the Q9300 with bit-tech shopping.
It's not all Intel's problem though - the new energy efficient AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850e, a 2.5GHz 65nm dual-core 45W chip that launched with AMD's new 780G chipset is also nowhere to be found. You can find the 45W BE-2400 just fine, but it's also only 2.3GHz and very expensive compared to other CPUs like the 65W 5000+. In contrast, the new Phenom X4 9850 has more stock - the best UK price is again Ebuyer for £152 but other stores aren't far behind.
Are you frustrated with CPU availability and have you resorted to buying something else? Let us know in the forums.
While Intel is not having yield problems, we did find out it is facing fab capacity problems - an eye opener seeing as it has more fabs than any other chip company.
We checked UK retailers for Q9450 stock and only found it available OEM at OCUK for a wallet emptying £293.74. This is significantly more than the typical £260 asking price, such is the consequence of supply and demand.
What about Q9300? This chip has half the cache (even less than the 65nm Q6000 range) and is slightly slower than the Q9450 (2.5GHz versus 2.66GHz), but it also has a faster 1,333MHz FSB compared to the Q6600's 1,066MHz. This does impact on the overclocking though: The Q6600 has a 9.0x multiplier which should allow the chip to clock further than the Q9300's 7.5x.
We checked other UK retailers today and only found quite a few of these available: Ebuyer has the UK best price at £162.95 and 54 in stock, although Scan and Yoyotech aren't far behind at £169.20 and £169.39 respectively.
OCUK has 10+ in stock of the OEM version on offer for £171.54 and Tekheads has three in stock for £176. Remember you can also keep updated on the Q9300 with bit-tech shopping.
It's not all Intel's problem though - the new energy efficient AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850e, a 2.5GHz 65nm dual-core 45W chip that launched with AMD's new 780G chipset is also nowhere to be found. You can find the 45W BE-2400 just fine, but it's also only 2.3GHz and very expensive compared to other CPUs like the 65W 5000+. In contrast, the new Phenom X4 9850 has more stock - the best UK price is again Ebuyer for £152 but other stores aren't far behind.
Are you frustrated with CPU availability and have you resorted to buying something else? Let us know in the forums.
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