Is LGA 1366 still a good buy?

Intel has been rolling out news for LGA 1156 and 1155 processors left and right. Intel’s recent release of the Sandy Bridge CPUs right now has made quite a splash. With the advent of Ivy Bridge potentially making its first appearance at Computex Taipei 2011 on June 4th, new information about LGA 1366 has been pretty silent.

People must be wondering at this point, whether or not it is safer to invest in LGA 1156 motherboards over LGA 1366 motherboards. This worry is rightfully justifieid, especially with how fast LGA 1156 and soon, LGA 1155 processors are rolling out.

Here is a couple things to consider:

1. The LGA 1366 socket still contains faster processors to this day

   These processors still perform much better than all the other ones available. Sure Ivy Bridge will have some performance enhancement, but it will mainly be focused on shrinking down 22nm technology to save power, and lower temperatures.

2. The LGA 1366 socket is the high-end socket

   Because this socket is only focused on the high-end market, there will only be a select range of products available for it. The other two sockets concentrate on low and medium-end processors and motherboards – which has a much greater range of customers. You really can only release a couple of high end products before you experience cannibalization.

3. There have been rumors of all sockets being discontinued

   Yes we have all heard rumors about 1156 being discontinued with the advent of LGA 1155. We have also heard rumors of 1366 being discontinued. But no one knows any of this for sure. The point is that these all are just… rumors.

4. Intel is rumored to release its flagship Core 990X

   This processor was receiving a lot of attention back in November and is apparently suppose to come out in Quarter 1 of 2011. Here is a reminder of the stats based off of retailer’s leaking information:

   – Six Physical Cores + Hyper Threading (Six Fake Cores) = 12 Cores
   – Clocked at 3.46GHz and goes up to 3.6GHz with Turbo Boost
   – 130W TDP
   – 6x256kB of L2 Cache
   – 12mb of L3 Cache
   – DDR3 1066+ Support
   – Around $1000

   That looks like the peak for this generation of LGA 1366 models. New generations of LGA 1366 are definitely still possible. Also note that there is a chance the other processors will slightly lower in price as a result of this release.

5. There is also rumors that more 1366 processors will come out in Q2 of 2011

   Not much is known here, but because we are speculating LGA 1366’s demise, we might as well speculate its expansion as well.

Intel has left a lot of things up in the air right now, and everything we know at this point is clearly hearsay. If you want solid performance that will last you ages, you can still get the 1366 series and be okay. This is even truer if you are just a hard core gamer. And hey, at least we know where the video card industry is heading.