[lucb1e]

I'm both excited and not. This is more power in a CPU and that's great progress, but for a desktop? I mean servers, games and graphical applications would be faster but the majority of our waiting time when using a computer is on a single-threaded calculations. As someone who doesn't game a lot and uses GIMP only for the most basic of purposes, I would much rather have an improved dual core CPU that produces less heat in total (compared to 8-cores) and can be clocked higher because of that.

[umanwizard]

Well, yeah. This is their very highest-end processor, and costs more than the entire desktop+monitor+peripherals that most people need. Not sure what point you're trying to make. Do you think companies shouldn't continue pushing the envelope of what's possible?

Edit: "very highest-end processor" should read "very highest-end PC processor". I'm excluding the workstation-class Xeon.

[knweiss]

Haswell-E is Intel's high-end consumer CPU series and there's nothing wrong with that. However, only buy it if you regularly use software that is able to utilize that many cores/threads.

The dual-core CPU you are looking for is called the "Pentium Anniversary Edition: Intel Pentium G3258" and was released in July.

[wmf]

The tradeoff between fewer faster cores and more slower cores has been mostly solved by turbo mode. If only a few cores are in use they will turbo to a high frequency and the others will turn off. Unfortunately in practice the turbo isn't very good on Haswell-E.