It looks like the planned “Lynnfield” mainstream versions of the Nehalem architecture chips won’t be arriving until August or possibly September. That’s bad! But Core2 Duo and Quad chips are expected to receive a price cut very soon. That’s good! If you’re in the market for a processor, wait a couple weeks and save yourself a few bucks.
But what could be the reason for this delay? Well, remember yesterday when Intel announced its profits were down 90%? There’s a huge backlog of processors and motherboards that were supplied to meet a demand that never came. Intel is hoping some price cuts will help clear the warehouses. Also, the transition this year is from DDR2 to the faster DDR3, which is necessitating a new wave of DDR3-compatible motherboards. If Intel released the Lynnfield processors too early, they’d either need to make them compatible with DDR2 hardware or face slow sales because of low DD3 adoption numbers.
Either way, it dashes my hopes of getting a Nehalem-based MacBook Pro. Damn and blast!