Prices could start under €100
Yesterday we saw some prices for Intel's P55 boards, and we can report that they were pleasantly low.
Intel will offer around ten P55 motherboard models, and two of the low
end models could easily end up costing under €100 at launch. We still
don't have the exact specs, so we won't speculate much, but in any case
even a stripped down P55 board for under €100 sounds like a very
tempting deal, and for €110 to €130 you should be able to get a nice
mid range board.
One of the major stumbling blocks for wider penetration of Intel's Core
i7 was the price of the motherboards, which sold at well over €200 at
launch, and even today most are priced around the €150 mark today. With
LGA1156 you're looking at much more reasonable prices, both for the
motherboards and CPUs, as you'll be able to get a Core i5 750 at
2.66GHz for under €200.
The only P55 board currently listed on our price search engine is MSI's P55-GD80, and the lowest list price is €190, although we're talking about a high end board.