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#10
The whole chip industry is not making any major progress. Most of the CPU on the market are QuadCore with the exception of some Hex Cores and that is basically how it will stay for quite a while. There is a newer Socket on the Intel horizon over the next year, that only offers more of the same Quad Core and Hex Core which you can already buy with Socket 1366 just for larger price but there probably won't be any difference in price with Intels newer socket, which makes the sockets out presently and what's to come basically on the same level, which do you upgrade to ? Whatever you want because if you buy a new Socket today odds are in three years it still will be as good. What about Ram, What about it ? Intels newer socket will be continuing with DDR3 in other words, DDR3 is not dying anytime soon, it will be sticking around for a few years.
AMD offers a cheaper alternative, I've see the prices of AMD chips and they are mostly all below $200 (US) add a new mobo and some ram and you haven't rung up the bill that high. What will hit you the hardest regardless if you choose Intel or AMD is the video card. The industry has taking the thunder away from the CPU and moved it to the GPU, the GPU is taking on more tasks. AMD even offers a CPU with both the GPU and CPU on one die for less then $200 for many in a time when the US economy is on par with the great depression this is very attractive. This is why Intel is not putting the spot light on it's newer desktop CPU but rather it's mobile ATOM chip which can be found in, low cost NetBooks and Smart Phones which sell more bulk quality, especially Smart Phones which tends to sell for $500+ which Intel probably gets a pretty good deal out of each phone.
Overall the CPU industry is not dying, it's just not in the spot light, probably for good. And with cloud computing both AMD and Intel are realizing why does a PC need so much power when the cloud is doing most of the number crunching ? You may or may not like Cloud computing but if you are on a social network or something that runs off the cloud, I'm afraid to tell you, you are on the cloud. There is a computer in mostly every home in most of the world, now the industry wants to tell us how to use it !
Thanx.