Final Thoughts

Over the last few weeks I have read both sides of the argument about Lynnfield.

The AMD fans are saying it is a last ditch effort by Intel to prevent AMD from stealing market share. On the other hand, the Intel fans are saying it is going to be the next big thing.

In reality it falls in with the latter, it is going to upset the playing field and force AMD to re-think their current market strategy. AMD can no longer say that dollar for dollar they have the better CPU. If the pricing is correct at $196.99 for 1k lots of the Core i5 750, then the AMD Phenom II X4 955 (which runs about the same price) is a comparably priced CPU that cannot keep up in CPU related tasks.

This will lure many people over to Lynnfield and the P55 Express chipset. It is just a simple matter of a powerful, well-priced CPU. Add in the great overclocking potential and the great performance scaling at higher speeds and you have a bargain with the Core i5 750.

However, the launch of Lynnfield has been a fiasco. With any CPU launch there are always leaks and NDA breakers. But this time it was worse. The CPUs and motherboards were on sale in many countries almost two weeks before today's official launch - even longer in Taiwan. This meant that many people have already bought them and tried them out. It also meant a large number of websites were releasing reviews way in advance.

Although I think this is a shame, I do not think it will affect sales of these two great processors from Intel.

The Core i5 750 is an incredible value and highly overclockable even on air. If the P55 boards are as inexpensive, I can see these flying off the shelves. AMD is going to have to work very hard to recover from this one.