Why are the q9450's sold out pretty much everywhere I look on the net?
 
Seems like every retailer says they are due in sometime in May.  
 
Whats the deal?

ya, intel is not selling them - they say its the lack of compition from amd. i am not sure where they are going.
 
you can find them from time to time, try tiger
 
 
intel can make E8500's all day, they get twice as many E8500's as they do quads - at $279 you need to get $560 for a quad.
 
you soon see lots of Q9550 and the price of quads is going to $500, intel needs to raises prices to maximize share holder value

Only a small qty of Q9450 released to market, I still wait for my Q9450   Wake up la amd  

 
haha, Q9550 is a high profit but is just a small market product.

If you need a high end quad today the X3360 is widely available.
 
If you can settle for a lower end quad, the Q6600, Q6700 and Q9300 are widely available.
 
I suspect Intel is not holding back processors because of weak competition from AMD. It's probably a far more simple reason. Intel wants to reduce it's inventory of Q6600 and Q6700 processors before making the Q9450 and Q9550 processors widely available.
 

Yeah, I had problems finding a Q9450 last month until I saw the OEM version being sold at Microcenter.com for about $299 (I had to pay NY taxes though).
 
I was going to buy a HSF so I didn't care that OEM CPUs do not come with one.

I got a Q9450 off eBay awhile back. They seem to be readily available there. I paid $360.00.

I just checked Microcenter, where I got my Q9450 - they don't even have it LISTED now.  Not even as "sold out" or "backordered" or anything, just straight-out delisted.  What's up with THAT?

 
I think its just Intel. There is no pressing reason to release the Q9450 and Q9550 chips, i.e., no competition. Remember the QX9770 that was showcased when the Phenoms first came out? Intel was initially worried that AMD might have a winner and it was ready to put out a bunch of chips to defend against the Phenom. We know what happened with the Phenom, and so I think Intel just pulled back. From a financial point of view, its best for them to sell out the Q6600, Q9700, etc at present prices, rather than having to sell them for less or even at a loss.  

The Q9450 has been taken off of Newegg for the past week or 2 already, also.

Hmmm, then I'm glad I got mine from Microcenter ($299, as jaguarskx said) a few weeks ago.  The Q9300 is still listed on Newegg.

I sped over to Micro Center months ago when I heard they had the $199.99 Q6600 in-store only special thinking they'd sell out.  A year ago, who would have thought you'd be able to buy a four-core processor for the price of a low-end suit?

So what's actually happening here?  Are they just releasing them slowly and in small quantities, or did they stop producing them altogether for the time being?

Fry's seems to have a decent stock of them. I stopped by my local store on Monday and they had 5 retail boxes instock, 0 oem though. They had the oem sku turned off. Not sure what that means from an availability standpoint. But the point is, they had some in store. Even had the guy call the cage(locked area) and do a visual check on them. Almost bought it but have to pay off my washing machine first, then its time for a new build

I just remembered an article from Anandtech that might have something to do with this:
 
http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=428
 
Within the article, "This is our first 45nm Quad core processor we managed to kill outright during testing. We hope it is the last one too. The problem is that we also have a Q9300 that is on life support after experiencing a 36-hour run at 435FSB with VTT set to 1.45V."
 
This makes me wonder, is Intel silently stopping production while it figures out the problem and fixes it? Unlike AMD's Phenom, this is a problem that occurs only when overclocking, yet Intel knows that a large number of people who buy these chips do overclock their CPUS. Perhaps Intel fears there is another, unspecified problem as well. I don't know, but it might explain the sudden disappearance or shortage of the Q9450.

The component shop called me the Q9450 was available after I posted my last reply in this post. I temporary used my Q9450 with Vcore 1.216~1.230V and it is overclocked to 3.2GHZ. I guess the Vcore could be lower for example 1.18~1.2VDC which can let me not necessary to buy expensive cooling when overclocking, and I will try lower voltage later.