Pure speculation .... I think it will stay Feb 2010 so that is the next project I will be targeting after CEP is done. For CEP I have emerald in sight and an outside chance at sapphire so I will likely be sticking with it to the end. Although I did not make it on DDDT and I may not make it on CEP, my personal goal is to sapphire all projects, I may need to get another i7 soon . I will follow RICE with FLU and then HFCC. I may change my mind based on new projects being released which I am sure will happen by the time by the end of this year, we'll just have to see what the future brings

The i7 is an awesome cruncher. They are fairly expensive, (I built mine so saved some money and overclocked it to get more results), they use lots of power, and create lots of heat. That being said, from a power and heat perspective they are really not that bad compared to a P4 but produce substantially more results.

P4:1284 per core * 2 cores = 2568 per day
i7: 3923 per core * 8 cores = 31384 per day
12.22 times more crunching !!

My next i7 will be a frankenstein because I can reuse most of the parts from my old P4 (PSU, VGA, HD, case, fans) so I only have to buy a motherboard, CPU (~370 USD if I get openbox mother board and microcenter 200 usd cpu sale). I will also be stealing 2 GB RAM from my current i7. This way I can get another cruncher up and then replace the parts with more efficient ones as time goes by. Hopefully when Intel releases the hexcores in the second half of next year I will be able to afford to upgrade both so I will then have 24 crunching cores (plus 1 little lappy running at night).

Steve

I would wait just a little bit to see how the new lynnfield processors (socket 1156) are at crunching ... total cost is lower, including lower energy cost. I am pretty sure the official release is for 9/10 but they are already showing up in shops in taiwan. I would imagine that by the time the initial price gouging for a new platform is finnished (by xmas) that there will also be lots of testing done by hardcore crunchers so we will know for sure if lynnfield can take the crunching crown away from 1366.
<side note> Intel did a really screwy thing with naming conventions ... the low end and middle socket 1156 chips will be in the i5 family and the high (870) end will be in the i7 family. Don't let this *family* naming onvention confuse you as all the current i7 (920, 950, 975) are socket 1366 and are architected much differently and are not socket compatible (the 1156 and 1366 refer to the number of pins)

Got my Ruby yesterday On to the Emerald!!

Steve WCG,
Again thanks for the information. I am not in the computer feild and have let my limited knowledge of it slip so trying to play catch up. With my current machines do ok. In particular a dual quad 5440 does a great job crunching but at 100% it shuts down on its own from time to time.