7/24    http://csua.org/u/gin (amd.com)
        AMD releases new price list, effective today
        FYI, Conroe is launching Thursday, but it's unclear when inventory
        can satisfy demand, especially for the E6600 "sweet spot".
        \_ I want the E6600, bitch, hands off!  It's the nerd equivalent of
           "tickle-me-Elmo"
        \_ No!  It's MY processor!!!  Seriously though, does anyone know from
           experience if Fry's tends to get a good allocation of new CPUs
           early at a fair price?
        \_ I needed a new computer 6 months ago so I bought an AMD 4400+.
           I game but don't program or do anything heavy calculations on it
           I game but don't program or do any heavy calculations on it
           and it runs great.  Just curious: what are the E6600 buyers planning
           to do with your snazzy new cpu?  An E6600 wouldn't run my very
           piggy games any faster.
           \_ Presuming you are CPU bound and not GPU bound, yes it would.
              The E6600 is benching slightly faster than an A64x2 5000 in most
              games.
              \_ I'm neither.  I've seen the artificial benchmarks.  I'm
                 wondering what other people plan to do with their new toy.
              \_ But most real world gaming situations will be GPU limited.
                 People with high end machines will tend to push the graphics
                 to higher resolutions and such, something the CPU benchmarks
                 don't show. I'm not too excited about Conroe because it won't
                 make much difference in my usage. I like how they triggered
                 a price war though. I heard Intel is sitting on a giant
                 stockpile of Netburst-era processors. I wonder how much they
                 will lose on that.
                 This article is kinda silly but makes a point:
        http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTEwOCwsLGhlbnRodXNpYXN0
           \_ The 4MB of shared L2 cache significantly improves execution time
              on things like zipping files and encoding audio/video.  I expect
              compile time improvements to be similar, although I haven't seen
              any compile-time benches yet.  Performance per watt is also
              outstanding.  All that's left is if Intel can crank out these
              E6600 parts in sufficient quantity without going bust and any
              weird stability / compatibility issues.
              \_ Well they're definitely going to take a loss on the Great
                 Netburst Fire Sale of '06, but it's not going to ruin the
                 company.  Agreed that Core2 availability is an important
                 question.  An awful lot of volume goes on in sub-$100 CPUs
                 and it will be interesting to see how much cheap Netbursts
                 can stymie low-end A64s and Semprons.
        \_ News update: Fry's pricing on E6600 is $379.  Not yet in stock.