Here is the thing, with Intel's Tic/Tock 2 year cycle of die shrink followed by new architecture and the fact that Intel is actually able to deliver, more or less. on that schedule it is impossible to keep up on a budget or have a system that is not outdated (note I did not use the word obsolete) in a year or two.
My point is that is it now almost impossible to "chase the hardware" with Intel CPU and motherboards unless you buy a new CPU/motherboard and maybe memory every 2 years or less. Anything with DDR2 will be a dead end shortly (well I guess it already is).
HOWEVER - the real question is, in x years will software (game) be out there that compels/requires the user to upgrade ? Current high performance systems (CPU/motherboard/memory) have a tremendous amount of power, Now that Microshaft has us by the short hairs with regards to DXxx graphics in the OS - upgrading the OS will likely have more impact for gamers than the CPU/motherboard. It has been shown with benchmarks around the net that in general the i7 is not a big win for gamers. The i5 is the desktop version and will have the typical advantages of a die shrink but no huge performance increase over the i7. And my real point is that a nice core 2 system, tuned properly can likely provide up to 5+ years of useful service as it has all the horsepower needed except in special circumstances. If it is critical/worth the money to the user to save 20% of the time to encode a video etc the i7/i5 would be worth it. But the i5 is unlikely to be a huge improvement over the i7 for games etc. It is probably more important to go with Vista 64bit for the DX10 and memory than it is for going with an i7/i5 over a C2.
Based on the above I am telling my gaming customers that are on a tight budget to go with a Q6600 in either the Asus or Gigabyte $130ish board with 2 x 2GB (room to add another 4GB later) and then depending on monitor resolution go for the highest performance video the rest of the budget allows. (ATI 4890 1GB card my current recommendation for 1650x1200 22in monitors) It is my opinion for a gamer that with video card updates such a machine will serve for a long time. (This assumes an OC to 3.2+ and proper bios tuning ) . If they can squeeze in one of the 45nm quads - all good. Of course if money is not an issue --- weeeeeeee !!!
So yes the core 2 is at the end of the hardware upgrade road - right on time per Intel's schedule. But that does not mean the CPU is any less powerful and it is my opinion, with video card upgrades that it can serve very well for some time in the future. I play the uber pig of a resource hog Warhammer on my 2 1/2 year old sig system very well and with a video card refresh have no worries about playing anything that comes out in the next couple of years. And the "next couple of years" is important because we just had the i7 release and in two years "the next big thing" will come out of Intel.
So I think the Core 2 will be around for quite a while, but the i7 is nowhere near (just based on posts here) the "gotta have" upgrade the Core 2 was and I expect the i5 to even be less popular unless they do something serious to the chip to make it perform better in games. Another thing is that for businesses a core 2 system of any type is huge overkill for the typical office drone several of the small businesses I deal with are still running P4 systems just fine and the economy is not helping them push to upgrade. And when they do upgrade a modest core 2 duo obtained a "last years technology" prices will look very attractive. Hell they might even spring for win7 too. I digress.
The other thing is his buying time frame. i5's are an unknown ATM but are just an i7 derivative. It is a sure bet the needed DDR3 will be more expensive than the dirt cheap DDR2 available now, CPU cost likely about a wash, motherboard ???? , motherboard compared to C2 motherboard more expensive.
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Originally Posted by antiacid
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