Core Duo supply & demand means premium pricing. But on price/performance, Intel still has AMD beat (by a country mile)

Apparently, the law of supply and demand is kicking in with respect to Intel's new dual core microprocessors (officially, Core Duo, but previously code-named Conroe).  Not only does short supply mean higher prices,  but also a bit of rationing as well. Fellow ZDNet blogger Adrian Kingsley-Hughes writes:

With almost any product, the success comes down to two things; pricing and availability.  It seems that Intel may have stumbled on both of these with the launch of the Core 2 Duo range of CPUs....availability is still patchy.  For example, Newegg are showing that the E6300 and E6400 are available immediately (although they are limited to one per customer), but the E6600, E6700 and X6800 are nowhere to be seen.  This is a real disappointment because it was the E6600 and E6700 that showed the most potential when it comes to overclocking.  While the E6300 and E6400 are powerful, the real powerhouses aren't available....Another sticking point is price.  Newegg shows the E6300 and E6400 priced at $249 and $299 respectively.  This is well above the distributor price of $183 and $224.  With such a large increase in price, it's worthwhile going back and reviewing any purchase plans and factor in this new data.

But, proving that there's a silver lining to every cloud, George Ou says:

There are only a few places that I have seen carry the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4 GHz processor.  [Intel's Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz] E6600 processor has a list price of $316 but is selling as high as $459 at major online retailers and even then they can't maintain any in stock.  Computer superstore Fry's is selling the 2.13 GHz E6400 with an Intel Desktop motherboard for $499 when the CPU itself only lists for $224.....they are able to beat the fastest AMD FX-62 desktop processor which lists for $827 and they beat any of the older generation non-Core Intel CPUs.....

Adrian also has some news about why cooling issues may end up delaying some of Dell's Core Duo offerings until February 2007.  That however hasn't stopped Michael Dell from making sure his home gets a fully-outfitted workstation with two of everything (2 sockets, 2 cores each, and 2 monitors).