I direct this question mainly to the gaming lvl of computer user and below (multimedia, home/ office, email machine) Also does anyone have any idea or links to any reports predicting what kind of an effect the Corei7 will have on the price of existing 775 socket mobo’s and cpus. ~Disclaimer obviously this is tantamount to 100% speculation as they do not exist yet~ Thank you

No links, but as a gamer, you know everyone has asked, is the top gpu worth the extra price? Same applies here

games rely on gpu

according to ananadtech, they say that Nehalem is more focused on virtualisation and server performance I think, and less on gaming (at least comparing the jump from P4 to core 2)

I predict that the prices on 775 equipment will drop. But don't quote me on that.

And quite frankly my current 775 setup is speedy enough that I doubt I'll be upgrading anytime soon.

Sure, thats what everyones saying

On the whole i think you pay proportional to the price/performance of the highend parts. Whenever new stuff is released older stuff is moved down and some just disappears.
So stick the new stuff at about same as the odd new stuff and the old new stuff at about the price of previous.( <<<gibberish but you get the idea)
To a certain extent the whole multicore hype is useless to most. Most older PC's are still good for purpose. Most games only use two cores at most and i can't see that changing much over the next 1-2 years except for a tiny number of AAA games.

The biggest benefit of Nehalem will be socket compatibility with future processors for future upgrades.

will the earliest releases of the nehalem Q4 2008 affect the price of the socket 775 tech or will we have to wait for the more q2/q3 2009 mainstream release to see a drop in 775 prices (mobo and cpu)?

Very true. However, with the trend in processors seeming to be heading to more and more cores, I wonder how long it will be before the addition of more cores outpaces the ability of die shrinks to keep the processor the same physical size. The next die shrink to 32nm is likely about 2 years away, but we have already been hearing talk of 8 and even 12 core processors coming in the near. I wonder just how much room for growth there will be in this socket.

Is that not more a comment about the newer socket type it's self?
wouldn't that be the advantage of the newer socketed mother board not the cpu?

It's funny I heard long ago, a joke made by people about the increase in cores....

"My PC has 50 cores" - 1st guy
"Wow when did you get your PC? Back in stoneage? Laff My PC has 1000 cores" - 2nd guy...

I'm still waiting ~_~

Future upgrade paths are like jokes. Everybody thinks they have a really good one but most of them aren't that great.

If you buy with the expectation that you won't be able to upgrade your CPU or migrate your RAM to a new build, you usually end up being right much more often than not. A VRM change, lack of a BIOS update, and perpetually faster/bigger/lower-latency RAM make that a pretty safe bet.

Socket compatability is, at least with AMD, targeted primarily at the server side where perf/watt is pretty important.

Servers often have a much more stable socket compatibility. AMD has gotten three generations of chips on Socket 940 (130 nm single-cores, 90 nm single-cores, 90 nm dual-cores) and two on Socket F (90 nm dual-cores, 65 nm quads). Intel got three on LGA 771- the 65 nm NetBurst Xeon 50xx, the 65 nm Core 51xx/53xx, and the 45 nm Core 52xx/54xx. They've gotten several generations on socket 604 in the MP space as well.