Even though Intel is facing virtually no competition on the high-end processor market, the arrival of its Lynnfield-based Core i7 860 early last month threatened to cannibalize sales at the lower end of the enthusiast LGA1366 spectrum. The chip carries the same $290 price tag as the "Bloomfield" Core i7 920, yet it comes with higher clock speeds and Turbo Boost capabilities, a tighter power envelope, and fits into a cheaper platform.

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MAN, Intel is on a roll with their product releases. I think it is almost expected that intel will kill off the 920 for faster speed when they release the 950.

Q1 2010?... and just a little speed adjust... at least that's not a good reason for me to wait for it, since anyone can achieve that with a small, insignificant overclock when buying the 920...

I bought a desktop with the 920 in February and have been very pleased with its performance.

As much as I like seeing all this awesome technology coming out and how awesome/cheap/green it is it can get pretty depressing when I think, man I'll never get that. Or when I finally do it will be out of date already.

Cheers to Intel though, seems like they're doing pretty well at the moment.

This should come in good news to hardware enthusiasts , its refreshing to see Intel hard at work ! As the i7 rolls into the market its growing quite nicely !

It's cool to see Intel moving along, sad to see AMD dieing out in the CPU market. I'm using an overclocked Q9550, HD4850, 4GB system right now I've been pretty happy with. But 1 1/2 ~ 2years when it's time to upgrade again I wouldn't mind switching back to AMD. "I like keeping a nice cycle of Intel/AMD going." Maybe the new CPU company we saw up on TS a little while ago will make something really cool for mass market in a couple years, and will get to try them out.

I hope it's not a big disappointment like the i7 870 was, which was producing the SAME performance as 920 when both were clocked at 4.0 ghz.

For $290 you could get more than a netbook. Too steep for my blood. Do you really need all that POWER?

Intel's Core i7 LGA-1366 performance segment processors is in for another update, past the recent introduction of the Core i7 960 (3.20 GHz). The newest entry replaces the popular Core i7 920, and leverages the company's socket LGA-1366 platform as the ultimate high-performance desktop platform. The Core i7 930, like all processors in the Core i7 900 series, runs on motherboards with the Intel X58 Express chipset. The processor comes with a clock speed of 2.88 GHz. Assuming it retains the base frequency of 133 MHz, we're not entirely sure how 2.88 GHz is worked out with a bus multiplier value that is a whole number. Since the Core i7 930 replaces the i7 920, it is expected to seat itself at the same price point of $299. Since this release comes slightly ahead of that of Intel's "Gulftown" 6-core processor, in Q1 2010, it remains to be seen if this processor continues to be built on the 45 nm HKMG process, or the newer 32 nm one.

I think it is very nice to see Intel producing a lot of fine chips, but I'd like to see AMD come back with something of their own (though as far as I can tell, AMD have been beter for good value chips, just below highest performance).

I'm still kind of steamed about the Intel retail scandal to be honest, but regardless, if AMD don't produce something soon, I will be buying Intel for my next upgrade.

I was just thinking the other day that it was about time Intel replaced the 920 as they replaced the 940 with 950 then 960 and the 965EE with 975EE.

And the 920 is such a great chip that the 930 should be awesome if it does take the same price point as the 920. Would be even better if it was a newer 32nm design.

Hopefully I will have some money when this thing is out and can buy into the X58 platform myself.

$290 price tag seems too expensive. Well, Intel can charge that price, cause there is no competing product for now.

It's gonna be a loooong time till I even think about the i7's, I still feel like I haven't really worked my e8500

Intel just keep making the i7 series better and better. I will definately get one when i come to upgrading my PC and hopefully they would have progressed even further!

great news for those who havent upgraded yet to quaddies, but upgrading from 920 to 930 probably is just a waste of money, you get same stuff in new package, its like 4870 vs 4890, i wounder how many people really utilize full power of i7
intel should really concentrate on gpu's, since nvidia have totally lost gpu war to Ati it could be good moment to return, if only they had anything better that those crappy 3dfx like integrated video cards

I have a Q9550 and P8600 for my 2 desktops and an older Core Duo 2Ghz for the laptop. I can't see any need to upgrade in the near future. I cant wait for laptops with 16+ core cpu's. More cores will help running more virtual machines so I can have my entire test environment running on my laptop and still have cpu's for normal tasks.

I hope this goes for $199 at Micro Center as well shortly after release. If you have a 920 then this is a pointless incremental upgrade but for me this looks cool to get a little more juice for the same price!

man this will just sweeten the deal when i build my new rig around tax time get a slightly better cpu for the same money

I would really like a i7 but not with $300 per chip and $150+ per board. That is almost $500 just to get started, plus DDR3, man. I am looking at $1200 at least for x58 i7. Prices need to go down. I will be happy with $800 system