Only really just read reviews as wasn't that interested.
The chips are faster, the mobo's are making them really very dissappointing and value wise, releasing the midrange first always looks bad. Like with AMD/Nvidia the new stuff, because its really replacement chips rather than new high end chips, the older stuff is better value right now and not really any slower. When something costs a decent amount more but offers unmatchable performance, no one cares.
I wasn't really paying attention but was somewhat aware it was only quad/dual cores to start off with, I figured 6 cores would be replaced in a couple months but its, Q4 for 6 core high end chips, which is a bit mad.
Does that not mean that assuming Bulldozer launches sometime May-June, that they'll have new gen, potentially brilliant 8 core chips almost half a year before Intel releases only their 6 core chips that likely won't come close to Bulldozer 8 core performance?
AMD could be on to a great year, even so I'm tempted to grab a 2500k system, power usage is ridiculously impressive, top overclocked 2600k system power usage vs a maxed out Phenom 2(quad or hex core) or any of the older Intel top end chips is superb really.
The thing thats really, between dissappointing and ridiculous, is the mobo's, why on earth is the Z68 chipset so far from being released and why on earth did they need a H67/P67 board, considering all the overclocking and important chipset functionality is on die, its pretty much insane to release a P67 for overclocking THAT ALSO disables the gpu. Its not like I want to use the intergrated graphics but, at some stage they should be trying to get on die gpu acceleration of things while you also have a discrete gpu, disabling any chance of that is honestly, ridiculous and backwards and working against everything "fusion" type chips are moving towards.
AMD won't get that right either, I highly doubt they'll have a chipset that disables it but enabling on die gpu acceleration with discrete gpu will be problematic, but both companies should be working on intergrating gpu acceleration and a whole range of mobo's with the gpu disabled really hurts that end goal.
If the Z68 was out and available I'd probably pick up a 2500k system when its available but with two basically poor motherboard choices, gpu and no overclocking, or paying for a on die gpu I can't use both seem like I'm being cheated.
Really I just can't explain why Intel felt the need to disable the GPU on the P67 chipset, theres not a single situation I can think up where its a good idea for Intel.
Especially with Bulldozer providing real competition for Intel, it being high end and out well before Intel's "high end" chips, on par price wise with the new Intel chips(most likely) artificially limiting the P67 chipset for literally no sane reason at all, seems incredibly stupid.
