Will quad 775s ever be cheap?

If they already had a clearance on their stock, the supply will run low and the price only goes up. 775 cpu supply is drying up on the market, on the increasing price side of the curve now.

forget it, if you really want to go quad for cheap, go AMD Phenom II 955. Unfortunately core 2 quads were as good as first gen i7's, so they discontinued them to make people buy the new model. They are holding their value on ebay because clock for clock they are on par with a Phenom II, although yes i think they are very overpriced. Its the end of the line for socket 775, time for a platform upgrade for you and me. I am going to hold out just a little longer to see what the new AMD processors will be like, they will be released in less than a month.

I get that I will have to upgrade to the new tech eventually. But since I have the ep45-ud3l gigabyte MB it seems a waste to leave the e5300 in it. I see the 775s are getting rare and thus are not getting cheaper. But is seems that at some point they will get cheap. At least used ones. I have several celeron boxes, that the family use, that I could stick it in when I'm done with it.

I have to disagree Dude. I had a Core 2 Quad and an i7 simultaneously. I lined them up side by side and ran the same software to encode identical files from AVI to MPEG2. The Core 2 Quad had 8 GB RAM to the i7's 4 GB. The i7 completed the task a solid 40% faster. Also of interest is the fact that the Core 2 Quad was maxed out on all Cores whereas the Hyperthreading i7 was running at 30% across all 8 Cores (4 Logical).

Gillbates

The CPU's becoming cheap concept simply does not exist. It is true you may be able to buy a pre built system for a reduced cost from a franchise looking to move it on when new stuff rolls in. The good thing about CPU's however is that they generally outlast the motherboards. This means there is likely to be CPU's available in the second hand market. If you have a functioning board then you are able to take advantage of the fact some hapless punter has a dead board and is not able to replace it easily.

Sadly, that will never happen. I have a few LGA 775 systems in mind belonging to my friends that I could help them upgrade, but C2Qs are still ridiculously expensive and I find it much easier to just upgrade the whole setup right away. Hunting for those things ain't worth it, especially since they don't make them anymore and the supply keeps going down =(

have you tried overclocking the e5300 ? I got 4GHZ easy on a ud3r you should be able to get there. The cheapest quad you can find is the Q6600 its the oldest of the lot but is actualy a great chip at 3.0-3.6Ghz.

i thought about getting a q6600 too, theyre fetching near $150 in australia, i cant bring myself to do it on sheer principle. why get a used 2.4ghz quad core for $150 when i could get a new AMD quad 3.2ghz that can be oc'd to 4ghz for $112....even if i do have to buy a new motherboard and ram, which will be better off in the long run as it will support AMD bulldozer cpu's. Personally im going to wait the few weeks to see what AMD's bulldozer will be like.

Forget LGA 775, the Phenom II quad cores can be had for a much cheaper price and is on par with the core 2 quad.

When Ivy Bridge hits the market next year then the C2Q is several generations behind. The C2Q is still a great CPU for many applications but it is not in the same league when it comes to gaming and encoding etc.

long story short , if it is an intel ship, it wont get any cheaper. my E8400 is the exact same price as when i bought it like 3 years ago.
the price of a decent 775 mobo is ridiculous. there seems to be no " high end" boards available unless you go off ebay.

^+1

When I bough my E3110 (Xeon branded E8400) in March 2008, I too thought that, along the way, I would switch to Quad when the price drops, but it never did; my own CPU barely dropped 25$ since my purchase (190$ vs 215$) which is ridiculous.

I just ended-up buying a new SandyBridge CPU, for ~400$ I got an i5-2500K, 8GB DDR3-1600 and a good Z68 MB; when the Q9650 sells for ~325$, is it even worth waiting for a price drop when it can't really compete with a new build in price/performance?

^ +1
lets not forget that its the old architecture as well, 45nm vs. 32nm.
i know it can be tempting as heck, but save up, try to get a newer something to upgrade with .the old chip just not worth it

to badd I paid 100 for my Q6600 and after the overclock im pretty satisfied
but if you are going to buy an AMD board you might as well just buy a new intel board and cpu

interestingly, lots of first gen lga1156 i5's floating around on ebay for cheap, due to sandy bridge i guess   it's a dead end as far as cpu upgrades i know... but £75 for something that'll oc to 4.2ghz to put it on par with the i7 hex's, temping....