Excellent review Steve, thank you for your brilliant efforts. You have covered almost every area which needed attention, however, one question which I felt need to be looked at is "will IGP's performance can multiply just like CPU performance with every product cycle?" If so, then I guess by the mid of this decade IGP performance level may reach 70-100$ discrete grahpic range, at which point significant market for the likes of nVidia in these segments will disappear and Intel and AMD will be left alone to fight it out. Not a bad situation for most of the users IMO.

Secondly, I would like Intel to take a step forward and comeup with something to rival with Optimus, where when the discrete GPU is not needed the desktop PC should switch straight to CPU-IGP; which should result in reasonable power savings as well.

PS: I am not an Ecomentalist, but power is an expensive commodity in my part of the world

Some other site is comparing the Core i5 2500K to the Core i7 975 EE and the Core i7 2600K to the Core i7 980X. When Apple, HP, and Dell start shipping Sandy Bridge computers to retail, this is going to be epic. Epic, especially when I have a shiny new Sandy Bridge i7 desktop playing NFS Hot Pursuit sitting in my bedroom in March.

Well it had to happen. 2 Years after buying my Dell Studio XPS with i7 920 there is finally a worthy successor to the chip and finally my processor is not guarenteed to sit in the top 3 of all CPU related benchmarks. Its been a long time at the top and I was quite used to it. Dammit its gonna be a long way down

Still, 2 years ain't bad. Longest I've ever had a CPU remain the high in the charts etc.

Nice review guys

One question I have on these strangely awesome cpu's, what does Intel know that we don't? I mean those prices are extremely odd! We all know Intel are very good at producing $1000+ high end cpu's, so why do we have these that kick the last generation's butt all over whilst undercutting their previous efforts with price. Are they aware of some upcoming AMD competition or are they trying to push AMD's market share out of the window?

I'm sorry, I really don't know what I typed there looking back at it! I suppose we've just got to be grateful that they haven't charged more than they have given their impressive products that sit with their extreme range! It's also nice to see that Intel have still pushed ahead with their tech as much as possible despite there being very little coming from AMD in this particular segment yet.

Hi, I have to ask because this baffles me. I have looked at all sorts of reviews now, and the review sites use 1200watt, 850, 750 and 700 watt. I haven't seen anyone below which I don't get because even a 300 watt PSU should be sufficient. Isn't this correct or am I missing something?

Great review.
How many different CPU/Chipset combos do you really need to have?
With 14 CPU's and 4 chipsets how much more complicated can you get? Yeah, there will be more chipsets later, just to make the waters more muddy.