I was looking at the purchase of a new Intel Core 2 Duo based system and was somewhat annoyed at the pricing structure. It looked like the premium paid for the higher speed models was out of wack with the low end pricing. To help the analysis some quick and dirty calculations were made to get an idea of how much of a premium was being paid. The figures shown here are based on:
- www.ple.com.au $AU pricing as of 27–Sep-06.
- www.spec.org SPECint_rate2000 figures for Dell based machines
The intent was to get a basic indication of the sweet spot for the Core 2 Duo pricing, so all the nuances of benchmarking are not a huge issue (lies, damn lies and benchmarks!). The SPECint_rate2000 value was chosen based on the typical style of application that will be running on the machine. The pricing curve across the various models is sort of like a hockey stick i.e. the price shoots up as you go towards the higher end models.
The performance increases across the models, but virtually linearly and from quite a high base performance for the lowest end model.
The $/rate value provides some indication of the effective cost per achieved performance result. The E6300 is excellent value at the low end, but there is a clear hike in the $/rate for the two higher end models. The E6600 is the model I’ll go for. It then provides an option to upgrade once new models come out or the pricing structure changes. Personally I think Intel made a mistake with the large increase in pricing for the E6700 and E6800. Its just too much of a jump in pricing compared to the other models and I feel “ripped off” when seriously considering purchasing the high end processor. Its worth paying some premium to get the fastest desktop processor from Intel, but “some” is the operative word.
