With the release of Intel's Skylake processors, it was only a matter of time before Haswell would be at its end. Now, not only have Skylake CPUs become more readily available, but their prices are relatively low, and some of the Haswell SKUs look to be selling out.
To date, Intel has managed to get six of its desktop Skylake processors out to retailers. Although the enthusiast K-series processors are priced a little above their Haswell counterparts, the other Skylake processors are highly competitive against Haswell in terms of price, too. Right now, Newegg is running a sale on the Intel Core i5-6500 3.2 GHz Skylake processor, giving it an end price of $194.99. The Haswell equivalent with the same clock speed, cache and a much higher TDP, the Core i5-4570, sells for $199.99, making the i5-6500 an obvious choice between the two.
There is also the Intel Skylake Core i5-6400 priced at $189.99, just $5 above the cheapest Haswell Core i5 processor. Although the i5-6400 is clocked 300 MHz below the Haswell CPU, its much lower TDP, higher IPC and improved GPU make it a tempting alternative to Haswell.
The situation gets even worse for Haswell when you notice that some SKUs have sold out and likely won't be restocked. It is a common practice for Intel to shift production away from older CPUs after its latest generation of processors have arrived. Intel does this slowly to allow for its stock of the new CPUs to build up but ultimately ceases production entirely of the older processors.
Currently, two of the Haswell Core i5 CPUs, the i5-4440 and i5-4590, are showing as sold out, but they are likely just the first of many. If you are considering a Haswell-based system or a CPU upgrade to your current system, you should probably move to buy the processor sooner rather than later or prepare to do a full system upgrade to Skylake.
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Michael Justin Allen Sexton (or MJ) is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware. As a tech enthusiast, MJ enjoys studying and writing about all areas of tech, but specializes in the study of chipsets and microprocessors. In his personal life, MJ spends most of his time gaming, practicing martial arts, studying history, and tinkering with electronics.
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