That still doesn't change the fact that pricing didn't change even the slightest - it is just relative value of the $1000 and $500 CPU is different than before. Costs are identical. And it will stay the same for entire Haswell-E lifetime. Maybe Broadwell-E/Skylake-E (whatever is next on LGA2011-3) will give us 8-core as middle model too, but i wouldn't bet on it.
Relative value is intrinsically linked to the price, isn't it! Therefore if relative value has decreased, the price is seemingly higher!
Prices are not really suprising people just expected to get the 2nd model and get a 8 core. Personally I never expected that. Most people I know expect to see gains from just going to DDR4 and waiting for a second hand 8 core chip to come avail or pick one up on a daily deal sometime from one of the websites. Personally tempted anyway for the 8 core chips cost is still cheaper than the xeons are so its a cheaper alternative to that for me at least.
You've got more chance of a sexual act off the Pope than an ITX 2011[-3] board, IIRC Bindi said ASUS wouldn't even entertain the idea of making an ITX board for a CPU without an IGP [which is why there are no AM3 ones] and I can't see MSI or Gigabyte thinking any differently tbh... plus as faugusztin points out it's enough of a squeeze getting Standard Desktop chipset stuff to fit on an ITX board as-is, and the HEDT stuff has more stuff to try and shoehorn on... As for the price, again as faug points out the top of the tree Intel CPUs have always been about the grand mark, QX9560 - $999 MSRP, 990X - $1059 MSRP, 3970X the same, 4960X also $1059 MSRP so I expect the top of the tree Haswell-E to be about the same... whether they were worth it or not is/was a matter of opinion...
It would appear so, though if the rumours are true the 5820 is hobbled slightly by only having 28 PCI-E Lanes available compared to the 40 of the 5930/5960 EDIT: 'hobbled' is probably a bit off, 28 lanes is the same as the regular desktop cpu/boards have, and if you don;t SLI you'll probably not notice/care, it's just noticeably fewer than the other 2...
If I'm going in, I'm going in good and getting the 5960X. Maybe being a bit skint at the moment is a good thing. I'll wait for DDR4 prices to settle, and have the luxury of being able to sit back and watch while others bin the chips so I can just dive straight in with a decent clocking one. Paying £1000ish for a chip is nothing new. My 3960X was about that. I remember paying £700 for a AMD FX57 back in 2005. I just think people are annoyed because they can't get 8 cores in the next rung down the ladder, but this pricing structure shouldn't be a surprise to anyone interested in high end "extreme" CPUs. I'm wondering why those bemoaning the 6 core "budget" option are doing. A chip like this is wasted on gaming etc. Only video and 3D work really needs 6, let alone 8 cores.
I also hope to be upgrading to this platform this year. I've had my current build since 2009 more or less with a couple small upgrade/sidegrade in that time. Perhaps I don't need 6 or 8 cores today, but what about 4 years from now? For someone like me that keeps a build for a longer time the higher cost and ensure it will still be enough towards the end of it's lifetime is a good plan. For me it will be a huge cost as I won't be carry over anything but perhaps my recent PSU. So new motherboard, cpu, memory, an m.2 ssd, and probably a gtx870... and on top of all that maybe even some new watercooling parts and a new slightly modified build of my custom case design. That's going to be so expensive I don't even really want to think about it too much.
Not needing that much power is part of the problem. Lets face it, for the average joe who doesn't play games absolutely every cpu intel released since the very first C2D model is still good enough. And for those who do game even something as pedestrian as a used i5-2500k from ebay is good enough. And for video and 3D work you don't just have to consider Cpus, but also the GPGPU alternatives. It's getting harder and harder to justify spending money on PC upgrades every year.
I need to qualify that with... those that do video and 3d AND game... which makes quadro or fire cards a poor choice for everything you do.. in that situation, the more cores the better,
Normally I am one of those who will try and buy something the day it's released but these cpu's are not something I am doing that on. I did it with the 8800GTS x2, GTX280 x2, GTX480, GTX580 x2, GTX 680 and then GTX780Ti, it took me a while to get my 3930k and to be honest I have no real need for a 8 core cpu and could, get away with a 4690k or 4790k quite easily but I like having more power than I need, because I never know what is going to happen round the corner. If I see the reviews for the 5930K and 5960X are stupidly faster than what I have now then I will try and upgrade at some point, this year otherwise it can wait till March next year when I get my bonus if I get one and then I will upgrade, as long as Nvidia have not released the 900 series cards by then as I am skipping the 800 series.
So is it a good time to be looking at upgrading to a used (albeit well looked after) cpu and mobo? While everyone is faffing over 2011 and ddr4 over xmas I might be able to afford to get MY upgrade!
Hmm. I won't be upgrading for a LONG time since I use my home PC mostly for gaming now. 6 non-hyperthreaded cores should see me happy for a few years yet. Just got to keep the GPUs up to date!
Well , i think i have my favorite for the RAM - http://www.caseking.de/shop/catalog...t-Series-DDR4-2400-CL16-32-GB-Kit::28696.html. Standard height (no problems with coolers, enough capacity and doesn't look that bad either. And finally, pricing looks fine. While you could get some 32GB DDR3 modules as low as 250 euros from some brands (DDR3-1600/DDR3-1866) and 290 euros for DDR3-2400, majority of 32GB DDR3 kits from more respected memory manufacturers are north of 330 euros. The dual channel 2x8GB DDR4 kit is 220 euros : http://www.caseking.de/shop/catalog...t-Series-DDR4-2400-CL16-16-GB-Kit::28695.html
I'll be happy enough with six cores (+HyperThreading) - it's an additional four threads over my current 3770K, and should provide plenty of grunt for the next generation of games that are more multi-core aware. 16GB of DDR4 is all I would need as well, rather than a more crazy 32GB. Then I just go to town with the GPU.
