Q9550: No price drop?!

It seems that the Q9550 prices were not cut along with the E8400 and E8500.
They were supposed to drop to the level of the Q9450. Even then, the price is
a bit steep for an 8.5 multiplier when compared to the Q6600.

Somehow, I lost my Q6600 overclock stability on the Biostar P965. I had to
drop it to 2.8 GHz at 1.35v. It seems that board does not even officially support
the quad cores. So I swapped the board for a Gigabyte DS3L version 1 board
I had bought for my son and was planning to use as soon as someone made a
decent value video card. I built his system with my old E6400 and the P965
in an Antec P180 case and Antec NeoPower 500 power supply. I got him an
HD 4870 because I had a Fry's gift card and they were out of stock on the COD4
that he wanted for his birthday. I considered the HD 4850 that was on sale for
$180, but then I saw the little whizzy fan and said, naa. I really wanted to get
one with more than 512 MB of memory as he has a 24" monitor, but he GTX 260
prices were ridiculous there. I wish now I had just bought something else as I
came around a corner in BF2 and got "the pause." Shortly after, I was dead,
but didn't get to see what killed me. Other than that, it's OK, but we already had
a hair dryer.

Anyway, the Q6600 is now stable at 3 GHz at 1.2875v, which droops to 1.26v
under load. Go figure. Actually I haven't tried higher yet. It gets hot enough
in this room with three computers and a big window facing the sun in the morning.

It seems that the Q9550 prices were not cut along with the E8400 and
E8500. They were supposed to drop to the level of the Q9450. Even
then, the price is a bit steep for an 8.5 multiplier when compared to the
Q6600.

There, they are now.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115041