Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Quad Core, why is it still holding its price so well?

I have a Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Quad Core and its been in my PC for about 2 years.
I was just wondering why its has held its value so well as the socket 775 is a bit out of date now compared to the i5 and i7 Chips?

But checking on e buyer the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Quad Core is still going for £585.48
Compared to a
Intel Core i7 960 Bloomfield 45nm, 3.20 GHz, QPI 4.8GT/s, 8MB Cache, 24x Ratio for £445.52

I have lost track with hardware over the last 2 years so why would some one buy a Core 2 Extreme QX6700 over a cheaper Core i7 960 Bloomfield 45nm, 3.20 GHz?

:stupid:

I don't consider eBuyer a good judge of price personally. Basically because most of the time they'll have bought the QX6700s at a certain price and will need to make a profit on it, also there is only one in stock (and likely none in reality due to losses etc).

Online shops always have stupid prices on old tech that's still in the original box.

The QX6700 probably isn't worth all that much, given that you can get 45nm upgrades for socket 775.

don't take the ebuyer price as a guide. They'll have bought that a couple of years ago and it'll be sitting around in stock unsold because most people don't buy the top end CPU of a particular family. Store prices will always be based on the wholesale price a component was purchased at (plus profit margin, obviously), rather than a realistic selling price in the current market. Legacy components also tend to attract significant mark-up at retail due to generally low supply. Look at the cost of SDR and DDR1 memory, after all...

BUT, having said that...

Socket 775 quads, and particularly the Q6600 / QX6700, are holding their second hand sale value very well, mainly because the subsequent components haven't been a huge advance - particularly on s775 for people looking to upgrade from a dual core. The Q8x00 and Q9x00 have less L2 cache are not particularly quicker (the Q9x50 is a different matter, but see my earlier comment about top end processors ;) ), and the older quads are compatible with more motherboards, so they're a very desirable upgrade option for s775 - leading to high demand.

At the same time, they were such good performers that without going to i7 - and particularly i7 9x0 - there's not a great deal of performance gain to be got out of doing a full system upgrade at the minute - spending hundreds on an i5 750 plus new mobo and RAM isn't going to get you much real world improvement. As a result, there are very few people replacing Q6600/QX6700, so there is a low supply to the market.

High demand + low supply will inevitably lead to high prices.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by scaryjim

don't take the ebuyer price as a guide. They'll have bought that a couple of years ago and it'll be sitting around in stock unsold because most people don't buy the top end CPU of a particular family. Store prices will always be based on the wholesale price a component was purchased at (plus profit margin, obviously), rather than a realistic selling price in the current market. Legacy components also tend to attract significant mark-up at retail due to generally low supply. Look at the cost of SDR and DDR1 memory, after all...

BUT, having said that...

Socket 775 quads, and particularly the Q6600 / QX6700, are holding their second hand sale value very well, mainly because the subsequent components haven't been a huge advance - particularly on s775 for people looking to upgrade from a dual core. The Q8x00 and Q9x00 have less L2 cache are not particularly quicker (the Q9x50 is a different matter, but see my earlier comment about top end processors ;) ), and the older quads are compatible with more motherboards, so they're a very desirable upgrade option for s775 - leading to high demand.

At the same time, they were such good performers that without going to i7 - and particularly i7 9x0 - there's not a great deal of performance gain to be got out of doing a full system upgrade at the minute - spending hundreds on an i5 750 plus new mobo and RAM isn't going to get you much real world improvement. As a result, there are very few people replacing Q6600/QX6700, so there is a low supply to the market.

High demand + low supply will inevitably lead to high prices.

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Thanks Mate lots of info and that i was after as well! Only reason why i have this chip as i got 50% off :mrgreen: as member of fam worked for intel :clapping:

Thinks i will stick with it some more then... save some money.

Cheers for your time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by malice19

Thinks i will stick with it some more then... save some money.

Cheers for your time.

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You're more than welcome :D I plan to stick with my Q6600 for at least another 18 months - probably be choosing between octo-core cpus by then!