QOTD: Do You Think CPUs are Overpriced?

I think if you shop around you can get a decent CPU for not an overly expensive amount of money, especially on the AMD side. However, the higher end processors are way overpriced (i7 *cough*).

At the current moment buying a Intel/Amd Duo/Quad Cores are at resonable prices, but if you want the best you pay the overpriced prices.

There only overpriced if you need the best and newest as said i7 above or fastest AM3.

otherwise creep for a good deal and scoring a 79.99 amd duo core isn't too difficult, for me i being friends with gamers who

No, CPU's are extremely cheap - if you consider the engineering that goes into them, you can buy a core2 processor for less than £50, imagine trying to buy a watch for that... 10 dvd's? now what seems like better value?

All I know about overpriced prices on Intel is:

Intel Core i7 940

Intel Core i7 exterme.

There are some overpriced CPUs but there are some reasonable ones. The market is pretty balanced as I see it. You want the best, you have to pay for it.

is it wqorth buying the best, pc gaming has hardly moved on a massive amount in the last couple of years and there havnt been that many big game releases. So what do that leave left for the high powered i7 for? grpahics work? DVD transcoding? i dont see the point anymore in getting the latest and greatest for a massive price. when all i do is browse the web, use office, and play counterstrike 1.6 and left 4 dead on my ati 3850.

They are too expensive because AMD isn't as competitive with Intel as they used to be and Intel is exploiting its monopoly on high performance. I remember the pain of the mid 1990's when Intel has no decent competitors and would slowly drip-feed new models onto the market, and maintaining a huge price differential between the bottom and reasonably performing chips and we are returning to that. Cast your mind back to just the recent past when Athlon chips were out-performing Intel, there were new models being produced quickly and chip prices were constantly falling. The Intel Core i7 920 is the entry level for Nehalem and hasn't changed price for months, with a decent competitor chip it would be a hundred pounds cheaper.

High end CPUs are mental. Back off a bit and its ok. Motherboards and GPU prices are where the real mental prices are.

I do not need 40% of the bits that come with a motherboard these days.
GPU top end card should be able to run just about anything a year old; but they seem to choke on some games with everything turned on. They cost more than a 360 with a few games. Thats not right.

I've been building computers for the last 10 years and I been getting much more for my money now. I used to buy average processors but now I can get great ones for the same price. I bought an i7 back in January, yes it's more expensive than most chips, but its worth it.

If you want to get great value, buy AMD. The processors they produce are unbelievably cheap. BUT I don't break the bank and I get the best.

...its motherboards that are overpriced!

Using Australian prices I would say that the E5200 ($102 AU) is the best price chip on the intel side. Looking at the Q8200 ($250 AU) which is 2.5 times the cost of the E5200 and $20 AU more than the Q6600 ($230 AU) was less than a year ago, I would say that intel quad cores are still overpriced. The huge drop in the Australian dollar at the end of last year probably messed with our prices big time, causing PC parts to go up rather than the usual downward trend. I'm sure in time quads would drop under $200 AU and eventually even to $100 AU where they would be great value like the E5200 is now. However looking at the rapid drop in dual core prices since their introduction, Quad core prices haven't dropped in the same way. I guess probably because Octo cores aren't out or AMD just isn't competitive enough to push quad prices down, considering we have 2 intel generations since the Q6600, the penryn's and now the i7's.

On the AMD side, processors are great value, too bad the performance of these value processors just isn't competitive if you take overclocking into account. AMD dual cores are nicely priced, the phenom 1 x3 8450 could be had for only $117 AU last year which is a great price for a tri core. The phenom 1 x4 9550 at $182 AU last year was a great price for a quad core.

Since the introduction of the phenom 2, AMD prices are more inline with the overpriced intel prices for quads and tricores. On the otherhand performance has reached parity as well. In fact if you compare the E8400 ($251 AU) with the phenom 2 x3 720 ($225 AU) I would say that AMD prices are still pretty good. I consider the triple core 720 a better processor than the E8400 dual core. However when you compare the price of the 720 ($225 AU) with the 8450 which was $117 AU last year, things don't look that good. The 720 is double the price of the other triple core. I wonder if performance has doubled? No idea, too lazy to find out.

In summary I think dual cores are priced nicely, Intel quads are overpriced. AMD phenom 1 triple cores and quad cores were nicely priced (however performance wasn't that great) and phenom 2 prices are more in line with the overpriced intel prices.

If you compare CPU's with graphics cards, graphic card prices just plain suck. However they have improved in pricing with the introduction of the 4650 and 4670, which in turn dropped nvidia prices in the comparable performance sector. Finally gaming on a budget is possible (albeit at low resolution). The 4850 and 4870 were also good at dropping nvidia prices.

Before the 46XX series there was nothing in that price range (that cheap) for a gamer, so graphic card pricing has certainly improved, too bad they are still way overpriced when compared to cpu's.

I have to agree that good motherboards are overpriced as well when compared to cpu's. We will probably never see a decent motherboard for $60 AU, 60% of the price of the E5200 ($102 AU) cpu. A decent motherboard costs around $150 AU which is 1.5x the price of the E5200, which to me is certainly overpriced.

i7 and some other Intel Extreme CPUs are rather overpriced but apart from that most of the other ones are set at a fair price.

the price to performance ratio of the triple core Phenom X3 8650 running at 2.3ghz is very good, it only costs 65 quid

Some models definitely are overpriced.

Take the E5200 at around £54 - seems quite reasonable for a dual core CPU clocked at 2.5GHz (stock), but the next step up takes you straight to £72 for a measly 100MHz more clock speed (E5300). That's a 33% price hike for 4% more performance!! Where's the logic in that? IMHO too many Intel chips above the E5200 are over-priced.

The E7400 (2.8GHz dual core) priced at around £67 rather than £99 would be just sweet. The E4600 (2.4GHz C2D) at £103 is just plain ridiculous.

I'm sure I saw the E8400 at around £112 some time ago, now it's selling for £136!! That's a 21% price hike in less than a year!