Chicago (IL) – Several PC manufacturers announced Core i7 PCs prior to the official launch of the new processor at 5 pm Pacific time later today. The bragging rights of owning a PC with the fastest processor will cost you at least $1250 with the usual open end. Boutique PC vendors are offering configurations well north of $10,000.

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Core i7 may be available in at least one version that is relatively close to mainstream (the 2.66 GHz 920 model has a tray price of $284) and would suggest that sub-$1000 PCs should be possible, it isn’t entirely surprising that PC vendors are putting a premium on this new CPU.

The cheapest Core i7 PC we found was Gateway’s FX6800-01e, which includes a 750 GB HDD, 3 GB of memory, a 920 CPU, an ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card, a DVD burner and Windows Vista Premium 64-bit for $1250. The company also offers a version with the 2.93 GHz 940 CPU with 6 GB of memory, a Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics card, a 1 TB HDD as well as an 80 GB SSD for $3000.

Dell’s entry-level Core i7 offering is the Studio XPS desktop for $1500. The gaming desktop XPS 730 starts at $2600 and tops out at about $8000 with a factory-overclocked version of the Core i7 (965 3.73 GHz). The firm’s Alienware unit sells Core i7 PCs from $1650 (Area-51) and allows customers to configure the systems with up to 12 GB of memory and SSDs (not available for the Dell XPS) for about $6400. The more expensive ALX system starts at $3700 and tops out at about $7400.

Voodoo PC has not released a Core i7 system yet, which leaves the boutique market to vendors such as BioHazard and Falcon Northwest, at least for now. Falcon Northwest Core i7 PCs start at about $2650, but can be escalated to about $12,500. BioHazard systems start at $3000 and can approach the $13,000 mark. Those high-end systems get very pricey through high-end components, such as Intel’s Core i7 965 EE, for which some vendors demand an $1100 upgrade as well as fast Intel 80 GB SSD drives that are priced at around $1000.

It is interesting to note that high-end prices of the PCs have somewhat dropped over the past years. Also, Core 2 Duo computers were priced at up to $16,000 at their introduction (however, the cheapest started at below at $1000).      
 

Obsession with 3GB, musings.

Nov 17, 2008 14:22     

I never have understood the obsession of PC manufacturers of putting only 3GB of Ram into their systems, over night we seemed to go from 1GB to 3GB as the industry standard for prebuilts. One would think system manufacturers would care about the best performance for value with their clients and make sure memory configurations were dual channel optimized to provide for the best overall experience. Unless these machines are running with dual 1GB and 2x 512MBs I can't see any reason to go with 3GB.

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Re: Obsession with 3GB, musings.

Nov 17, 2008 15:24     

The new systems are tri-channel, therefore three sticks is the new thing in town
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Triple Channel @ Obsession with 3GB, musings.

Nov 17, 2008 15:28     

i7 supports 3 channels for memory so things like 1.5 gb, 3 gb, 6 gb, etc... are going to be far more common. Intel claims you can get a 8% speed increase running memory in this mode, however the latest benchmarks show only minor improvements in memory speeds over dual channel. But they are running the the best solution for "optimized to provide for the best overall experience" 3x1 GB sticks.
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3GB cap

Nov 17, 2008 16:59     

32bit windows XP & vista only support 3GB. go to 64 bit and no drivers for up to 128 GB.
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$13000 for what?!?!

Nov 17, 2008 17:13     

I just built the best computer humanly possible off newegg....2x 4870x2, 2x WD Velociraptors, Core i7 3.2 ghz, Intel X58 mobo, 4 GB DDR3 2000 mhz ram... Total Cost: ~$4000. Now I'll admit that a blu-ray reader and a case/cooling system would maybe add around $1000 more to that price tag but I couldn't possibly imagine paying $13000 for something that couldn't possibly be 3x better than what I built off newegg.

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Correction of ^

Nov 17, 2008 17:27     

I should correct the word "humanly"...it's not the absolute definitive best since you could replace the gpu's with tri-sli 280's and the velociraptors with SSD's which would bring the total cost to maybe a few K more. However, the configuration I gave would be the most high-end proven components.
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your confidence is your weakness...

Nov 17, 2008 18:41     

Let the ridiculous pricing commence!! :P
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@ Action Jackson and Proto-Omega

Nov 18, 2008 18:30     

Thanks for the good explination, hadn't read anything on the Core i7, tri-channel sounds interesting.
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