I've been watching the 4800 X2 (socket 939) drop all the way to around $300 on Newegg, and then; it was gone!
It reminds me of my previous desire to purchase a 3.06 GHz P4, the only processor you could use with a 533 bus with hyperthreading (800 proc's would only run at half clock speed without any hope of a bios update) that ultimately was abandoned (the 2x512MB sticks of RDRAM 1066 are laying around someplace, an expensive lesson).
I ordered an X2 4400 (OEM) because it was the last processor I could buy from NewEgg that had two cores, 1MB cache (per core), and fit in to my socket 939. DDR2? Ha! I am as willing to upgrade to DDR2 with it's crappy memory timings as I was to abandon my über expensive RDRAM (my P4 2.26 was an upgrade from a P3-800).
Not all of us can buy-out an entire system. For those like me, buying a CPU, new memory, and a new mobo happens once every two or three years tops. The cool stuff doesn't really come out until the end of a platform's running. By the time you're able to buy it there aren't any trustworthy vendors to buy it out (retail with the warranty).
Thankfully the 4400 is an example of a reasonable last minute upgrade. Sure it's OEM but I'm running a 3500 which I can use if I have to do an RMA. But the main point is that not all of us can afford the latest and greatest, but the greatest becomes completely impossible to get ahold of (at a reasonable price) by the time it's price comes down to most people's levels of affordability (in regards to also acquiring other components). Also I have the cache and can OC the extra 200MHz if I really need to. For me the cache is more important as it's better with number crunching. My 754/3200/1MB gobbled up 100 MB access logs via Awstats in about 15 seconds versus a full minute on my 3500/939/512K that is 200MHz faster.
There is another question, if the top components are in higher demand how come Intel and AMD don't produce more of those parts?
It reminds me of my previous desire to purchase a 3.06 GHz P4, the only processor you could use with a 533 bus with hyperthreading (800 proc's would only run at half clock speed without any hope of a bios update) that ultimately was abandoned (the 2x512MB sticks of RDRAM 1066 are laying around someplace, an expensive lesson).
I ordered an X2 4400 (OEM) because it was the last processor I could buy from NewEgg that had two cores, 1MB cache (per core), and fit in to my socket 939. DDR2? Ha! I am as willing to upgrade to DDR2 with it's crappy memory timings as I was to abandon my über expensive RDRAM (my P4 2.26 was an upgrade from a P3-800).
Not all of us can buy-out an entire system. For those like me, buying a CPU, new memory, and a new mobo happens once every two or three years tops. The cool stuff doesn't really come out until the end of a platform's running. By the time you're able to buy it there aren't any trustworthy vendors to buy it out (retail with the warranty).
Thankfully the 4400 is an example of a reasonable last minute upgrade. Sure it's OEM but I'm running a 3500 which I can use if I have to do an RMA. But the main point is that not all of us can afford the latest and greatest, but the greatest becomes completely impossible to get ahold of (at a reasonable price) by the time it's price comes down to most people's levels of affordability (in regards to also acquiring other components). Also I have the cache and can OC the extra 200MHz if I really need to. For me the cache is more important as it's better with number crunching. My 754/3200/1MB gobbled up 100 MB access logs via Awstats in about 15 seconds versus a full minute on my 3500/939/512K that is 200MHz faster.
There is another question, if the top components are in higher demand how come Intel and AMD don't produce more of those parts?