The Intel Core 2 Quad 8200 which we wrote about back in July has begun to show up on the market as expected, with Newegg listing it at $229 USD, just a tad over Intel's volume (1K) unit price of $224.

 

Specs for the 45nm-based 8200 are given as 2.33GHz clock, 1333MHz FSB and 4MB L2 cache, which should translate to performance slightly better than the cheaper ($193 USD) and much older Q6600 - providing you invest in faster memory to match the higher FSB.

 

Intel also released two other cheap chips: the Core 2 Duo E5200 (2.5GHz, 800MHz, 2MB) and Celeron D 450 (2.2GHz, 800MHz, 512KB) priced at $84 USD and $53 USD in 1K-unit quantities.

 

Overall these new CPUs are good news if you're a bargain hunter looking to build a new system, but we wouldn't advise anyone rushes out and buys them for an upgrade.