We have some disturbing news for everyone who wants to buy a Core 2 Duo or Quad this Xmas. Intel expects massive shortages of all Core 2 Duo processors from now to the end of the quarter.

This shortage will affect the Q6xxx/E6xxx/E4xxx/E2xxx processors and all October and November supplies are already allocated to customers. If you are a big computer store you can forget about ordering and getting some of these CPUs in November.

Once we enter December Intel believes it will have more of these CPUs, but the full recovery won’t happen until early Q1. The biggest issue is that in early Q1 Intel starts to sell the E8xxx series of 45 nm based cores.

I guess AMD will have better quarter than it expected.