Not looking hopeful on the Q9550 front?

[Qcmbr]

http://www.edn.com/article/CA6561499.html

This article suggests that supply will continue to be restricted assuming the US experience is replicated over here. That isn't to say that they aren't available but there are precious few retailers I've found offering them (overclockers uk say theirs have just arrived.)

Do we have any news on chip availability or lead times yet? More importantantly (to me :) ) is there any risk of the Q9550 not arriving for several months (in which case I'd happily pay the extra for the xeon assuming they were in).

Slight apologies for continual obsessing!

[andrew@kobalt]

We've been working really closely with our suppliers and Intel in the UK and stock is still very bad of the Q9550's. Q9450's are fine and have been for a while. We have been told by suppliers that we use in North America that they are expecting better stock levels from the begining of June. Either way.. we have orders in with everyone so we'll keep you updated as soon as we hear!

Regarding the Xeons.. similar to the Q's, the X3350's are no problem, the X3360's are looking poor as well. I will speak to our American suppliers on Monday about those and will see what we can do.

No problems with the obsessing.. I'm the same :p Can't stand this silly situation!

If things really don't improve we can either offer Q6700's (don't really want to as they're technically old tech and slower) or we can fit a Q9450/X3350 and you or us swap it out when we get Q9550's.

[Qcmbr]

An interesting situation - hmm - let's say I decide to get a Q9450 processor so I can get the system faster what do we do about the price differential and much more importantly is there going to be much of a performance difference in the real world.

One of my worries as a non-techie is how much will graphics performance be cpu bound (hence my desire for the best quad offered)? If the answer is not really much at all its probably worth me just taking the slightly slower chip and not worrying too much.

[neil@kobalt]

If you are running a task like encoding a DVD you will pretty much get the CPU frequenct difference in the time it takes i.e. 2.83GHz vs 2.66GHz is 6% faster so 56 mins vs 60 mins for the task.

RE pure fps graphics performance the CPU is certainally not the limiting factor.